[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14818-14823]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING WELFARE REFORMS

  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the 
concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 438) expressing the sense of the 
Congress that continuation of the welfare reforms provided for in the 
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 
should remain a priority.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                            H. Con. Res. 438

       Whereas the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) 
     program established by the Personal Responsibility and Work 
     Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-193) 
     has succeeded in moving families from welfare to work and 
     reducing child poverty;
       Whereas there has been a dramatic increase in the 
     employment of current and former welfare recipients;
       Whereas the percentage of working recipients reached an 
     all-time high in fiscal year 1999 and held steady in fiscal 
     years 2000 and 2001;
       Whereas, in fiscal year 2004, 32 percent of adult 
     recipients were counted as meeting TANF work participation 
     requirements, significantly above pre-reform levels;
       Whereas earnings for welfare recipients remaining on the 
     rolls also have increased significantly, as have earnings for 
     female-headed households;
       Whereas single mothers, on average, earned $13.50 per hour 
     in 2004, almost three times the minimum wage;
       Whereas the increases have been particularly large for the 
     bottom 2 income quintiles, that is, those women who are most 
     likely to be former or current welfare recipients;
       Whereas welfare dependency has plummeted;
       Whereas, as of September 2005, 1,887,855 families, 
     including 4,443,170 individuals, were receiving TANF 
     assistance, and accordingly, the number of families in the 
     welfare caseload and the number of individuals receiving cash 
     assistance declined 56 percent and 61 percent, respectively, 
     since the enactment of the TANF program;
       Whereas, since the enactment of welfare reform, the number 
     of children in the United States has grown from 69,000,000 in 
     1995 to 73,000,000 in 2004, which is an increase of 
     4,000,000, yet 1,400,000 fewer children were living in 
     poverty in 2004 than in 1995--a 14 percent decline in overall 
     child poverty;
       Whereas the poverty rates for African-American and Hispanic 
     children also have declined remarkably--20 percent and 28 
     percent, respectively, since 1995;
       Whereas, as a Nation, we have made substantial progress in 
     reducing teen pregnancies and births, slowing increases in 
     non-marital childbearing, and improving child support 
     collections and paternity establishment;
       Whereas the birth rate to teenagers declined 30 percent 
     from its high in 1991 to 2004. The 2004 teenage birth rate of 
     41.2 per 1,000 women aged 15 through 19 is the lowest 
     recorded birth rate for teenagers since 1940;
       Whereas, during the period from 1991 through 2001, teenage 
     birth rates fell in all States and the District of Columbia, 
     Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands;
       Whereas such declines also have spanned age, racial, and 
     ethnic groups;
       Whereas there has been success in lowering the birth rate 
     for both younger and older teens;
       Whereas the birth rate for those aged 15 through 17 
     declined 43 percent since 1991, the rate for those aged 18 
     and 19 declined 26 percent, and the rate for African American 
     teens--until recently the highest--declined the most--falling 
     47 percent from 1991 through 2004;
       Whereas, since the enactment of the Personal Responsibility 
     and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, child 
     support collections within the child support enforcement 
     system have grown every year, increasing from $12,000,000,000 
     in fiscal year 1996 to over $22,000,000,000 in fiscal year 
     2004;
       Whereas the number of paternities established or 
     acknowledged in fiscal year 2003--over 1,600,000--includes an 
     almost 300 percent increase in paternities established 
     through in-hospital acknowledgement programs promoted by the 
     1996 welfare reforms, and there were almost 915,000 
     paternities established this way in 2004 compared to 324,652 
     in 1996;
       Whereas child support collections were made in nearly 
     8,100,000 cases in fiscal year 2004, significantly more than 
     the almost 4,000,000 cases in which a collection was made in 
     1996;
       Whereas the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity 
     Reconciliation Act of 1996 gave States great flexibility in 
     the use of Federal funds to develop innovative programs to 
     help families leave welfare and begin employment, and to 
     encourage the formation of 2-parent families;
       Whereas annual Federal funding for under the new TANF block 
     grant program have been held constant at the all-time highs 
     set in 1995, despite unprecedented welfare caseload declines 
     and despite the fact that States may spend as little as 75 
     percent as much as they spent spending under the prior AFDC 
     program;
       Whereas total welfare and child care funds available per 
     family increased over 130 percent between 1995 and 2004, from 
     $6,934 to $16,185;
       Whereas child care expenditures have quadrupled under 
     welfare reform, rising from $3,000,000,000 in 1995 to 
     $12,000,000,000 in 2004;
       Whereas, under the TANF program, States have enjoyed 
     significant new flexibility in making policy choices and 
     investment decisions best suited to the needs of their 
     citizens;
       Whereas, despite all of these successes, there is still 
     progress to be made;
       Whereas significant numbers of welfare recipients still are 
     not engaged in employment-related activities;
       Whereas, while all States have met the overall work 
     participation rates required by law, in an average month, 
     only 41 percent of all TANF families with an adult 
     participated in work activities for even a single hour that 
     was countable toward the State's work participation rate;
       Whereas, in 2002, 34 percent of all births in the United 
     States were to unmarried women;
       Whereas, despite recent progress in reducing teen pregnancy 
     in general, with fewer teens entering marriage, the 
     proportion of births to unmarried teens has increased 
     dramatically to 80 percent in 2002 from 30 percent in 1970;
       Whereas the negative consequences of out-of-wedlock birth 
     on the mother, the child, the family, and society are well 
     documented;
       Whereas the negative consequences include increased 
     likelihood of welfare dependency, increased risks of low 
     birth weight, poor cognitive development, child abuse and 
     neglect, teen parenthood, and decreased likelihood of having 
     an intact marriage during adulthood, and these outcomes 
     result despite the often heroic struggles of mostly single 
     mothers to care for their families;
       Whereas there has been a dramatic rise in cohabitation as 
     marriages have declined;
       Whereas an estimated 40 percent of children are expected to 
     live in a cohabiting-parent family at some point during their 
     childhood;
       Whereas children in single-parent households and 
     cohabiting-parent households are at much higher risk of child 
     abuse than children in intact married families;
       Whereas children who live apart from their biological 
     fathers are, on average, more likely to be poor, experience 
     educational, health, emotional, and psychological problems, 
     be victims of child abuse, engage in criminal behavior, and 
     become involved with the juvenile justice system than their 
     peers who live with their married, biological mother and 
     father;
       Whereas, despite the strenuous efforts of single mothers to 
     care for their children, a child living with a single mother 
     is nearly 5 times as likely to be poor as a child living in a 
     married-couple family; and
       Whereas, in 2003, in married-couple families, the child 
     poverty rate was 8.6 percent: in households headed by a 
     single mother the poverty rate was 41.7 percent: Now, 
     therefore, be it
       Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
     concurring),  That it is the sense of the Congress that 
     increasing success in moving families from welfare to work, 
     as well as in promoting healthy marriage and other means of 
     improving child well-being, as promoted by the welfare 
     reforms in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity 
     Reconciliation Act of 1996, are very important Government 
     interests and should remain priorities for the responsible 
     Federal and State agencies in the years ahead for assisting 
     needy families and others at risk of poverty and dependence 
     on government benefits.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Miller of Florida). Pursuant to the 
rule, the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger) and the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California.


                             General Leave

  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and 
to include extraneous material on the subject of the concurrent 
resolution under consideration.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from California?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of House Concurrent 
Resolution 438. This resolution does something we don't do enough of in 
this institution: It takes a look back at what Congress tried to do in 
the previous years and assesses whether we got it right. As the text of 
the resolution suggests, many people, including some former critics, 
think we got it right.
  Mr. Speaker, the results of the 1996 welfare reform are remarkable in 
terms of achieving and in some cases

[[Page 14819]]

exceeding the goals the Nation laid out when Congress took on this 
challenging issue. Former Wisconsin Governor and Health and Human 
Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has called welfare reform one of the 
most successful social policy changes in U.S. history, and I think he 
is right. In terms of reducing dependence, promoting work and earnings, 
and reducing poverty, it would be hard to mask the outcomes of these 
reforms.
  I would also like to thank my colleague Clay Shaw for his steadfast 
leadership and tireless work to enact these remarkable reforms. Welfare 
reform did not happen overnight. And it would not have happened without 
his strong leadership.
  Ten years ago today, this House passed what went on to become the 
landmark 1996 welfare reform law. At that time nearly 12 million 
parents and children were dependent on the government. Today, after 10 
years of reforms and much success, that number is down to fewer than 5 
million individuals dependent on welfare checks for support, a decline 
of an unprecedented 64 percent, almost two-thirds. Millions of those 
families now collect a paycheck instead of a welfare check. Since 
welfare reform was enacted, we have seen a sharp increase in work among 
welfare recipients. This is a stark contrast to the Nation's former 
welfare program under which there was no incentive to work. In fact, 
the prior program actually punished work. But today, because of welfare 
reform, work among those on welfare has more than doubled. And to 
support working families, the amount taxpayers provide for child care 
has tripled from $4 billion to nearly $12 billion today.
  Back in 1996, welfare reform opponents argued that if enacted, this 
law would result in millions of additional children living in poverty. 
However, they were wrong with this prediction as they were with all 
their other predictions about what this law would accomplish. Compared 
to 1996, 1.4 million fewer children are in poverty today. This is a 
direct result of the pro-work, pro-family policies passed in 1996 and 
which are still in place today.
  Earlier this year, the House accompanied by the Senate sent President 
Bush legislation to extend and strengthen the 1996 reforms to help even 
more low-income parents go to work. All States are now busy revamping 
their programs to meet that challenge. Based on the results of the 1996 
reforms, we should have great confidence that millions more families 
will succeed in finding and keeping jobs in the years ahead. That is 
something every Member and, indeed, every American should support.
  Again, I would like to thank Clay Shaw for all his work in this area 
over so many years. I look forward to continuing to work in the years 
ahead to support all families in their efforts to end their dependence 
on government assistance.
  I urge all my colleagues to support this resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  We have before us today a Republican resolution that should be 
backdated to the last Democratic President, if it is to be honest, 
because when America actually made great strides in decreasing poverty 
it was during that administration. But that is not what we are about 
today. This is a PR event.
  H. Con. Res. 438 is a Republican attempt to take a victory lap on 
something they have done right. I mean on the war and gas prices and 
everything else, they cannot say anything. But in the run-up to this 
election, they are borrowing the vision and the success under the 
leadership of Mr. Clinton.
  The resolution is not about reducing poverty. It is about increasing 
Republican poll numbers. America's poor and disadvantaged deserve a 
fair shake, not a glad hand.
  It is unmistakably clear that domestic priorities under the current 
Republican administration and Republican Congress have focused on the 
rich, not the middle class, not the working class, and certainly not 
the disadvantaged class. And the record will show the great strides we 
have made to reduce poverty peaked in the year 2000, the beginning of 
the Bush administration, and they have been on a downward spiral ever 
since. The rate of poverty has been climbing during the Bush 
administration. The number of two-parent families living in poverty has 
increased during the Bush administration, and the number of American 
children living in poverty has also increased during the Bush 
administration.
  Now, you have to draw the line somewhere; so I intend to vote ``no'' 
because I want a real agenda for reducing poverty in America. Congress 
needs a renewed commitment, not a disingenuous celebration. It was the 
pre-Bush economy that boosted the value of work. And that is not all. 
This resolution ignores the domestic priorities championed by Democrats 
that have made a meaningful difference in the lives of ordinary 
Americans, like the earned income tax credit.
  Instead of a resolution meant to increase the poll numbers, we ought 
to be passing legislation to increase the minimum wage. We have tried 
and we have tried, and you can really do something for poverty if you 
would do it. In one stroke we could do more to reduce poverty in this 
country than all the resolutions that you have offered since the 
President took office 6 years ago.
  That is an honest assessment of the situation. There is a concurrent 
resolution I authored with Mr. Levin. Since the Republicans will not 
allow us to consider it, let me take a moment to discuss it. It offers 
an honest assessment of where we are today. It highlights the progress 
made in the second half of the 1990s on poverty and unemployment. It 
also makes it clear that poverty has increased since 2000 with more 
than 5 million more Americans falling into poverty, including 1.5 
million children. If you call that success, it is a strange success.
  The percentage of single moms who are working today has declined by 4 
percent since the beginning of the Bush administration. And we are 
sticking the States with new unfunded mandates; so there will be much 
less money available in the next several years to deal with this 
growing problem. That is the Republican solution.
  Our resolution makes reducing poverty a national priority, not 
wishful thinking, by supporting the States, who are the Nation's first 
responders in fighting poverty. We would like to have a great debate 
over whether or not America's best interest is served by a Republican 
resolution created for the campaign trail or by a Democratic resolution 
created to meet America's needs. As it now stands, the debate is about 
Republican photo ops and press releases, which I am sure have already 
been mailed.
  This resolution is designed by the Republicans so that they can try 
to take a victory lap after some successes in the welfare. But there 
cannot be a victory lap because the race is not over. Poverty is up, 
wages are down, and the working poor are losing in the Bush economy.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  It would be nice if today we could all work in a bipartisan way to 
take credit for something that Congress has done which has been so 
incredibly successful. I really regret the negative tone I hear from my 
good friends on the other side of the aisle.
  They made the comment that President Clinton had signed this. I think 
we should let the history speak for itself.

                              {time}  1415

  The fact is, after the Democrats opposed this legislation every inch 
of the way, opposing it in subcommittee, opposing it in the full 
committee, opposing it on the House floor, voting against it, and then 
having President Clinton vetoing it, not once, but twice, and only 
before the election where he was afraid that maybe the people might 
throw him out if he continued to oppose it did he finally sign it, did 
we finally get it. And after these dire predictions that the sky was 
going to fall in, that we have these incredible results that we have, 
again, it would be

[[Page 14820]]

nice if we could all take credit here for something we have done well. 
It is regrettable we can't.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Shaw) and ask unanimous consent that the gentleman control 
the time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Shaw) will control the balance of the time.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Delaware (Mr. Castle), who has a different view of welfare reform as 
the Governor of a State who did a tremendous job in that capacity at 
the time we were changing welfare reform and the way it served America.
  Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for 
the wonderful job he has done on this.
  We started on welfare reform in Delaware very early on, long before 
the Federal Government started to look at it, and, obviously, it 
involved people having to go to classes and having to go to work. It 
was rather unique at the time.
  I remember going to the first class, it was 19 people, 18 women and a 
man, and I sort of trembled. I was Governor of Delaware and I was a 
little nervous about that because I figured they wouldn't be receptive 
at all.
  My mind was completely turned around going to that class when those 
19 individuals said thank you for giving us the opportunity. They were 
being educated at that point. I went to their graduation later. They 
then went on to get jobs, and they subsequently went off welfare and 
became contributing citizens.
  I can't tell you the value of this program, the self-esteem of 
individuals who have been through this. You can look at the statistics, 
be it 40, 50, 60 percent, in the various States, and that is about 
where it is, for the reduction of people on welfare. And you say 
perhaps it saved money, although, frankly, it doesn't save a lot of 
money. It costs a lot to educate and day care and everything else.
  But the bottom line is that we have actually helped individuals. 
Indeed, it is a program which I think Republicans and Democrats have 
been supporting and should take credit for. And I certainly give some 
credit to President Clinton, because I worked with him as a Governor on 
this program as well.
  But it has made a huge difference in their mindset. It has made a 
huge difference in their families' mindset. It has made a difference in 
the children of these individuals, who see their parents going off to 
work and earning a living, perhaps having a little more spending money 
and being able to hold themselves high as far as their immediate 
society is concerned.
  This has been a highly successful program. It is true, I think, what 
Tommy Thompson said about it, and that is it is perhaps the greatest 
social reform program we have seen in this country.
  Every now and then something comes along which really can make a 
difference in the lives of people. I just would like to thank all those 
who worked on this, and I worked with some of them, mostly members of 
the Ways and Means Committee when they were working with Clay Shaw and 
others, because there was a lot of opposition to this.
  But, indeed, it is a program which worked, it is a program which 
should be continued and expanded if possible, and it is a program for 
which I think we will always look back and be able to take some good 
positive credit for.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Stark).
  Mr. STARK. The resolution before us, Mr. Speaker, ignores the 
realities of increasing child poverty, stagnating wages and lost 
opportunities for those families and children left behind by the so-
called success of the welfare reform. Pilot Shaw has landed his plane 
on the aircraft carrier and said ``mission accomplished,'' and the 
carrier sank.
  This resolution, looking at a 10-year window, ignores the disturbing 
trends of the last 5 years during the Bush Republican Presidency. Total 
poverty has increased for 4 consecutive years, and more than 37 million 
people are living in poverty today. Child poverty has been on the rise 
for 5 straight years, and 13 million children are struggling in poverty 
today. Real wages for low-income workers have been stagnant for 5 
consecutive years. It is time for the minimum wage to be raised, but 
the Republicans don't care to represent poor people, only rich.
  Nearly one in three poor single women are not working and not 
receiving TANF assistance, and fewer than half of the families eligible 
for TANF receive it. Child care funding under the Republicans is $11 
billion short of what CBO estimates the States need. The administration 
funneled $2 billion alone to religious organizations, trusting in this 
faith-based stuff, and the GAO has found the Bush faith-based 
initiative lacks accountability and safeguards against discrimination. 
And this has been, as Congressman Shaw would claim, the most successful 
social policy in history.
  What is it, sir, that you don't understand about the word 
``failure''? Instead of engaging in this political public relations 
charade, we should be working on a bipartisan basis to confront 
realities of poverty in this country. We should move ourselves into the 
present and work to ensure that we provide States with the resources 
they need to move families out of poverty, instead of wasting time 
defining marriage.
  We should focus on real programs that help families improve their 
lives. We need to improve their lives, expand the Earned Income Tax 
Credit, raise the minimum wage, increase access to Medicaid and 
Medicare, CHIP and food stamps. We need to provide work supports such 
as sufficient funding for children, remove the barriers to employment, 
provide education and training opportunities and get to work and solve 
the problem of poverty, instead of making tax cuts for the very rich 
and ignoring the middle class and doing it on the backs of the poor. 
That is the Republican way. The Democrats' way is to help everybody in 
this country rise out of poverty.
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished member 
of the Ways and Means Committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
English).
  Mr. ENGLISH of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the 
gentleman who as chairman of the Human Resources Subcommittee when I 
was a freshman was one of the key players in steering the welfare 
reform through.
  I was a freshman when our new majority came to power and was 
determined to do things differently. As a result, we were able to push 
forward on a key initiative to change the welfare system in a 
fundamental way. We were successful. We came up against terrific 
resistance, initially resistance from the administration; but we were 
able to steer it through. Ten years later it is clear that we were 
successful.
  As the gentleman said, this is a profoundly successful social reform. 
It is the most successful reform for bringing people out of poverty 
that we saw in the 20th century.
  We have seen dramatic reductions in welfare dependence, fewer 
families in poverty, increases in work and earnings and declines in 
waste, fraud and abuse of welfare benefits. And this has occurred, I 
believe, in the context of a clear contrast, because they took a 
completely different position when we put forward this new welfare 
reform initiative.
  May I quote the gentleman who is managing the time on the other side. 
It was just 10 years ago that he said of this legislation: ``It will 
put 1\1/2\ million to 2\1/2\ million children into poverty. In about 
1998, you are going to start to see the impacts on cities, with more 
homeless families. They can't pay their rent. You will wind up with 
people living under bridges and in cardboard boxes.'' That is what Mr. 
McDermott said in 1995.
  The reality is that we brought people out of poverty, we have brought 
the caseloads down, we have given the States more flexibility to deal 
with welfare problems. And it was this majority that fought them, 
fought them successfully, got a bill to the White House that that 
President could sign, and, in the process, started a transformation of 
our welfare system which continues today.

[[Page 14821]]

  Mr. Speaker, we should celebrate this landmark and move forward with 
further reform of the welfare system.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from Michigan (Mr. Levin).
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, the majority says they want to recognize the 
past. What you are doing in this resolution is to twist it. So let me 
say again what the facts were.
  The bill was vetoed by Mr. Clinton, by the President, because of 
inadequate child support and inadequate health care provisions. He so 
stated. He had started this effort to reform welfare, but the 
inadequacies in the bills that came before him required a veto.
  What was the result of the veto, of the two vetoes? Money was put in 
for child care and for health care. It is ironic that this resolution 
brags about the amount of money for child care. Without those vetoes, a 
lot of those moneys never would have been in welfare reform.
  The same is true of transitional Medicaid.
  So come here, but don't, for totally partisan electoral purposes 
twist the history of this. You are twisting it. Maybe you think it will 
gain you a few votes, but you lose your credibility and you lose any 
chance of proceeding on a bipartisan basis.
  You did the same thing in the bill that was passed just some months 
ago on welfare reform. You cut child support. This resolution talks 
about child support collections increasing; but in the bill that was 
passed recently, you made arrangements for a reduction in child support 
estimated by CBO to be $8.4 billion over the next 10 years.
  You talk in this resolution about giving States ``great flexibility 
in the use of Federal funds.'' That was one of the advantages of the 
1996 legislation and that is one reason why a good number of Democrats 
voted for it.
  In the 2006 legislation, you reduced the flexibility of the States. I 
want to just refer to some of the programs that the States have used 
that would probably be disentangled by this 2006 legislation:
  The Portland Program, that has some strategies so that people can 
upgrade their skills and get out of poverty. The Corpus Christi 
Employment, Retention and Advance Program. The Maine Program, that does 
rely on some higher education, including a 4-year degree. And also the 
Utah Program, that was very advanced in terms of addressing substance 
abuse and mental health. So you essentially have reduced the 
flexibility of the States.
  Let me talk for a moment about poverty and what was the main problem 
with the 2006 legislation. The data that we have show this, more or 
less, that 60 to 70 percent of the people who have moved from welfare 
to work have been earning less than 42 percent of the median average 
wage in their States.
  We were hopeful in the 2006 legislation that we would take a further 
step in welfare reform, that we would help people not only move from 
welfare to work, but from welfare to work that would take them out of 
poverty.
  You, on a strictly partisan basis, did not even bother to talk to us. 
You made no effort. You would not even work with us to try to provide a 
law that would help people move from welfare to work.
  So I regret your spurning any effort to make this resolution 
bipartisan. I think instead of recognizing the past, you are mainly 
twisting it; and there has been a failure of this Congress to take the 
next steps in welfare reform so people move from poverty into something 
beyond it when they move from welfare to work.
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, it is amazing, the gentleman who just left the well, 
when he would say this is a partisan resolution. I don't think the 
Republican name is in this resolution whatsoever. It is a figment of 
his imagination.
  This was a team effort. President Clinton did sign this bill. This is 
not a partisan resolution. So why don't you join with us and rejoice in 
what we have accomplished.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Linder), a distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Con. Res. 
438, of which I am an original cosponsor, which expresses the sense of 
the Congress that historic welfare reforms begun with the 1996 Welfare 
Reform Act should continue forward and continue to remain a priority.
  I wrote in 1979 that it was not uncommon for a government program to 
be begun for noble worthy purposes and end up becoming an end in 
itself.

                              {time}  1430

  The more assistance that was distributed, the more necessary the 
program, and the means became the ends. Before the consideration of the 
welfare reform bill 10 years ago, there was no indication that some of 
these government programs would be improved, much less encourage self-
sufficiency. This is not surprising, given how the welfare reform bill 
was described on this floor as, ``the most cruel and shortsighted view 
on public policy I have seen in 20 years'', and, ``a mean-spirited 
attack on children and poor families in America that fails every test 
of true welfare reform'', and ``a cruel attack on America's children''.
  Well, as we mark the 10th anniversary of the signing of the bill, the 
statistics show the successes. Welfare caseloads have declined almost 
65 percent. The poverty rate has declined. The child poverty rate has 
declined. The number of children lifted from poverty is 1.4 million, 
and the number of adults receiving welfare and working has more than 
doubled since 1996. The employment rate of never-married mothers has 
increased by almost 35 percent.
  We have achieved great progress in eradicating poverty in this 
Nation. Ten years ago, thousands of poor people who deserve much more 
from their government were unwitting pawns in the game for power over 
the lives of others. The 1996 Welfare Reform Act has been enormously 
successful and we must continue to help those who truly need assistance 
while encouraging those who can support their families to do so.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I thank my 
friend for yielding me the time.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Neal).
  Mr. NEAL of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding me the time.
  Mr. Speaker, this marks the 10th anniversary of the passage of the 
1996 welfare bill, a measure I voted for. And the legislation certainly 
was not perfect, but the system that it supplanted was even worse. Ten 
years on, instead of having a pep rally for TANF, I think what we ought 
to be doing is having a serious conversation about whether the program 
is being implemented in a way that effectively and realistically moves 
everyone who can work into a job so that they might support their 
family.
  With Bill Clinton, the TANF program rightly demanded that able-bodied 
people do everything possible to find and keep a job. But it also 
recognized the fact that single moms needed help with child care and 
transportation in order to successfully and permanently transition out 
of public assistance. So the Clinton budgets provided that traditional 
assistance.
  The Clinton budgets also made enforcement of child support payments a 
top priority, which gleaned billions of dollars, that pulled thousands 
of women and children out of poverty. Bill Clinton insisted on an 
increase in the minimum wage and an expanded earned income tax credit, 
which helped people earning the lowest wages support themselves.
  And the results spoke for themselves. Even as welfare caseloads 
dropped, poverty rates fell for every year that Bill Clinton was in 
office. So what has happened in the last 5 years? Child care, cut. Food 
stamps, cut. Medicaid, cut. Child support enforcement, cut.
  So it is a disappointment but not a surprise that poverty rates are 
once again on the rise. According to the Census Bureau in 2004, there 
were 13 million children living under the poverty line. Almost one 
American child in five grows up in a family that cannot pay for the 
bare essentials of life like food, shelter, and clothing.

[[Page 14822]]

  How can we let this happen? Today I want people to listen to this. 
Today a minimum wage worker in America who puts in 40 hours a week and 
never takes a vacation day, listen to this, they earn, at minimum wage, 
$10,700 a year before taxes.
  That is not enough for a single mother with one child to clear the 
poverty line. But I think it is the new face of compassionate 
conservatism. That is a full-time working mom who cannot possibly make 
ends meet for herself and her child. One in five kids in this country 
grows up in poverty.
  The welfare bill was supposed to counteract these trends, and when 
Bill Clinton was in office it was doing a good job. But the programs 
that helped welfare reform demonstrate progress like child support 
enforcement, child care assistance, have been eviscerated by this 
Congress and this administration. But we always have time here for tax 
cuts for rich people. If we cannot take care of Paris Hilton, who can? 
This welfare bill was a good start, and if properly implemented, it was 
during the Clinton years, we would still be on the path to reform.
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I would remind the gentleman in the well that it is rare 
today that people work for minimum wage. But those who do earn $10,700 
a year, they also get an earned income tax credit of $4,000. They also 
get food stamps worth $2,000. They get rent subsidies which varies.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania 
(Ms. Hart).
  Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for 
yielding me time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution. And I am somewhat 
mystified by some of the claims made by my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle. I and several of my colleagues spent a significant amount 
of time making sure that additional moneys were put into this 
legislation when it was passed to make sure that there would be more 
money for child care.
  That was signed by the President and is current law today. We have 
increased assistance to women who were on welfare, who are now working. 
We needed to do that in order to make sure that their children would be 
safe. Our goal of welfare reform was about family growth and security 
and future financial security.
  Our goal was certainly not to put the children in jeopardy, and part 
of that complete goal was to make sure that they had availability of 
child care. We have worked to make sure it is available at different 
times of the day. We have worked to make sure that it is available and 
convenient, and obviously that those who are providers are providing 
safe child care.
  Another point that I think is very important to refute is that there 
is something wrong with the direction we are moving in, asking for 
people to work more hours. Once they commit to receiving welfare, they 
commit to work more hours, and they do so. What we found, the 
statistics show that when people start to work, obviously, their 
incomes will rise. They begin to climb the ladder of future success and 
their children do not live in poverty.
  I want to repeat this point, because again it is the most important 
goal that we had of welfare reform, to make sure that from generation 
to generation children are not living in poverty. And children have 
been lifted from poverty as a result of our welfare reform, and more 
will continue to be lifted out of poverty as a result of more work 
requirements. These children will grow up with a great example of 
industrious working parents, and they will do the same.
  Mr. Speaker, this Congress has a lot of missions before us. One of 
them certainly is to help encourage people to grow in their abilities, 
to grow in their talents and their willingness to teach their children. 
This welfare reform bill has helped us in all of those counts. I 
encourage my colleagues to support it.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman 
from California (Ms. Woolsey).
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, this resolution is a celebration of bad 
policy. I voted against it when it was a Clinton proposal, and I voted 
against it because my fear was, based on having been a past welfare 
mom, my fear was that ultimately it would be the kids who suffered. And 
how right I was.
  So when the Congress reauthorized the welfare program recently, not a 
single Democrat voted for it, because Democrats know that what this 
bill does is fail to help families reach economic independence. Instead 
it pushes families off welfare, into the workforce without sufficient 
education, without adequate child care, and without a path to self-
sufficiency.
  If the Republican leadership was truly interested in improving 
families' welfare, it would be debating and passing an increase in the 
minimum wage, and we would be doing that today, instead of talking 
about celebrating welfare. The sad fact is that this Congress is more 
interested that fewer people get help than whether fewer people need 
help. And that is a shame.
  I encourage my colleagues, please oppose this resolution, a 
resolution that is trying to celebrate bad policy. A policy that keeps 
children in poverty.
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out to the gentlewoman 
who just spoke that the poverty rate among children has dropped 13 
percent since the passage of this resolution, and, Mr. Speaker, I 
reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, could you tell us the time remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 4\1/2\ minutes, and the 
gentleman from Florida has 6 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, we go through a policy like this in 20 minutes. The 
Republican policy toward children is, you have no entitlement to 
anything. The point of welfare reform was to take away the entitlement 
of health and welfare, and housing and food from children, to take away 
the entitlement and put it to 50 States to whatever they want to do.
  And we have 50 different plans in this country. The Republicans 
define welfare, people, those eligible for TANF, in such a way that you 
can drive down the numbers. You can push people off into work. And 
there is nobody on this side who has not worked in their life, who does 
not think it is a good idea to work.
  But what we believe is that you ought to work for a wage that is fair 
and provides a decent living. The Republicans for the entire period 
this has been in place have refused to raise the minimum wage.
  You want to drive people into poverty, and you did drive them into 
poverty, because when they are in poverty you can make them do 
anything. That is the way you keep the costs down in business, have a 
workforce of people who have to work for the minimum wage, and that is 
it for them.
  Now, you have cut Medicare. Medicare in every State in this country 
is in a terrible mess. There are 300,000 children eligible for child 
care in California who do not have access because there is no money. 
You say to the mothers, go out and work. Leave your kids at home, leave 
them a package of graham crackers, leave them a television, and leave 
them with their 12-year-old sister. That is the Republican plan.
  You also take away their housing benefits. When they go off of TANF 
they do not get access to those housing benefits they had before. So 
you take away every single piece of security for a child who knows they 
have a home, who knows there is going to be food on the table, who is 
going to have a parent there when they come home from school. And then 
you ask yourself why you have a drug problem in this country. Why you 
have kids getting in trouble everywhere, why the prisons are full.
  This is the result of a public policy that says we do not believe in 
the common good. We cannot tax the rich, oh, no, no, we must not tax 
the rich, they need another wall around their compound. But you can put 
kids out on the street, with their mother working down at the local 
motel cleaning beds for $5.15 an hour, that is all right with you. It 
is that that we object to.

[[Page 14823]]

  It is not that we do not think people should work, we just think they 
should work for a decent living, a decent wage, and you will not give 
them that. You want to define success. The press release will say, we 
have reduced the welfare rolls from 5 million, as it was in 2000, to 
about 1.9 today.
  But you will say nothing of the human misery you have created by 
these policies. The reason none of us voted for the reauthorization 
was, you put no additional money in for child care. And you cut the 
benefits for health care. And you do not take care of the needs of the 
kids. This is not about adults. Adults can make it. But it is a 
question about whether we as Americans, as a part of the common good, 
think children are entitled to a decent and safe childhood.
  And your answer is, we cut the welfare rolls, raise the flag, let's 
march around and have a big parade and we will send out press releases, 
we cut the welfare rolls. But poverty has increased. You have 5 million 
more people in poverty since Mr. Bush became President of the United 
States.
  That is not an enviable record; 1\1/2\ million more children are in 
poverty. How can you celebrate that?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                              {time}  1445

  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't know quite where to start in correcting the 
gentleman from Washington. First of all, he said that we didn't 
increase child care. Well, we had just done over a $1 billion increase, 
and that is just within the last few months. I would say that the 
gentleman's memory is a little short.
  He also talked about a secret Republican agenda. I was in charge of 
this bill 10 years ago, and I insisted that we did not do any of that. 
In fact, I don't know of anybody that was trying to do that. I 
maintained that we had to keep up the food programs, we had to keep up 
the Medicaid payments, taking care of the health care. We had to take 
care of the kids. We had to produce child care, in addition to all of 
this and all of the other programs that go along with the poverty 
program.
  But what did we expect? We expected people to climb out of poverty. 
We are going to help them, but they are going to help themselves.
  The problem of those who still oppose welfare reform is they have no 
faith. They didn't have any faith in the human spirit. We did have 
faith in the human spirit, and I can tell you the real champions, the 
real heroes of welfare reform are those who pull themselves out of 
poverty.
  It is not the Members of Congress or the Senate that are sitting on 
this floor. It is the single mom, and she is the hero.
  We started this program about 15, 16 years ago. We worked hard on it 
for many, many years. At every turn, we recognized the fragile nature 
of those that we were trying to rescue. Oh, we had a poverty program 
that was being guarded so carefully by those that wanted to pay people 
not to work, not to get married and have kids, the most destructive 
behavior you could possibly have.
  I remember when we came to this floor and debated this bill. Some of 
the comments that were made back then, and I will read one of the worst 
ones, and I won't even mention the Member's name because I think it is 
so bad. It says: read the proposal, read the small print, read the 
Republican contract. They are coming for our children, they are coming 
for the poor. They are coming for the sick, the elderly and the 
disabled.
  That is the stuff we were listening to on this floor when we were on 
a rescue mission. Through the debate on July 18, 1996, after several of 
the Democrat Members, some of whom have spoken today, spoke against the 
bill, President Clinton announced that he was coming on to television. 
We retired back into the Cloakroom to see what he was going to say. He 
looked right into the TV cameras, and he said, I am going to sign this 
bill.
  Well, that brought about some Democratic votes, and it made it truly 
a bipartisan bill. Since then, the statistical information that is out 
there is history. Let me run down just some of the things that welfare 
reform has accomplished.
  Welfare caseloads are now down by 64 percent, as nearly 8 million 
parents and children no longer receive welfare. The overall poverty 
rate dropped 7 percent, the child poverty dropped 13 percent, the 
poverty rate of young children in female-headed families, the group 
most likely to go on welfare, dropped 15 percent from 1996 to 2004.
  Compared with 1996, 1.4 million fewer children lived in poverty in 
2004. That is a victory. That is a victory for the human race. That is 
a victory for the poor Americans. The number of adults on welfare who 
work has more than doubled since welfare reform. More broadly, the work 
of all never-married mothers has surged 34 percent since 1996.
  I will never forget, at one of our hearings, and I think, Mr. 
McDermott, you were there, when one of the welfare workers came in and 
was bragging about one of her clients who went to school. One of the 
young kids had gone to school, and he raised his hand to get the 
attention of the teacher. The teacher finally looked down and said, 
What do you want? He says, My momma went to work today.
  What a wonderful thing. That mother who had nothing to do all day but 
sit around for the postman to come and bring her a check is now a role 
model for that child. What a difference that this has made.
  Yes, this was a rescue program. We paid a lot of money for job 
training and things in order to accomplish this welfare reform package, 
and it has worked.
  I can tell you I was stunned when the President said he was going to 
sign it, because all of a sudden I realized, my God, look what we have 
done, look what we have done. Now I can look back with great pride and 
see what this Congress did, what we accomplished, that rescue mission 
that took so many people out of poverty.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of the bill.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the 
welfare reforms provided in the Personal Responsibility and Work 
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The House is considering H. 
Con. Res. 438 that expresses the sense of the Congress that 
continuation of the welfare reforms provided for in the 1996 welfare 
reform act should remain a priority. The House Resolution marks the 
10th anniversary of the 1996 Republican-led enactment of welfare 
reform.
  I strongly support H. Con. Res. 438 that celebrates 10 years of 
success in reducing welfare rolls and helping children and families 
escape from the cycle of poverty. Ten years ago, Republicans decided it 
was time to reform our broken welfare system and give welfare 
recipients the tools they needed to escape the system and build a 
better life. Today, we can see the results of those efforts--a 64 
percent decrease in welfare caseloads, a sharp decline in child 
poverty, and a dramatic increase in the number of welfare recipients 
who work.
  Since Republicans have passed welfare reform in 1996, the overall 
poverty rate has dropped 7 percent and 1.4 million fewer children are 
living in poverty. I urge my colleagues to join me in support of H. 
Con. Res. 438. Support of this resolution is support for continuing to 
move from welfare to work more quickly and promoting and encouraging 
stable, healthy families.
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Herger) that the House suspend the rules 
and agree to the concurrent resolution, H. Con. Res. 438.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the concurrent resolution was 
agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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