[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18518-18521]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1715
    RECOGNIZING AND SUPPORTING THE SUCCESS OF THE ADOPTION AND SAFE 
                          FAMILIES ACT OF 1997

  Mr. CAMP of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and 
agree to the resolution (H. Res. 959) recognizing and supporting the 
success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 in increasing 
adoption and the efforts the Act has spurred including National 
Adoption Day and National Adoption Month, and encouraging adoption 
throughout the year.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                              H. Res. 959

       Whereas since the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families 
     Act of 1997, the number of children adopted from foster care 
     has increased significantly, with approximately 51,000 
     children adopted from foster care in fiscal year 2004 alone;
       Whereas despite this remarkable progress, approximately 
     118,000 children in the United States foster care system are 
     waiting to be adopted, and 49 percent of these children are 
     at least nine years old;
       Whereas adoptive families make an important difference in 
     the lives of the children they adopt by providing a stable, 
     nurturing environment for those children;
       Whereas National Adoption Day is a collective national 
     effort to find permanent, loving families for children in 
     foster care;
       Whereas both National Adoption Day and National Adoption 
     Month are in November;
       Whereas the Department of Health and Human Services 
     launched a series of public service announcements promoting 
     the adoption of children eight and older in 2002;
       Whereas more than 6,000 children have been placed into 
     adoptive homes since the Department of Health and Human 
     Services launched www.adoptuskids.org, a national photo 
     listing service for children awaiting adoption across the 
     United States;
       Whereas judges, attorneys, adoption professionals, child 
     welfare agencies, and child advocates in 45 States and the 
     District of Columbia participated in 227 events in 
     conjunction with National Adoption Day in 2005; and
       Whereas these events finalized the adoptions of more than 
     3,300 children from foster care: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved,  That the House of Representatives--
       (1) recognizes and supports the success of the Adoption and 
     Safe Families Act of 1997 and of the efforts it has spurred;
       (2) recognizes and supports the goals and ideals of 
     National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month; and
       (3) encourages adoption throughout the year.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Camp) and the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. CAMP of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 959, a resolution that 
recognizes the successes of the landmark Adoption and Safe Families Act 
and honors National Adoption Day and Month. I was proud to introduce 
this resolution and the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which we honor 
today.
  The work of Congress over the past decade has led to dramatic 
improvements for children in the foster care system. In fact, since 
1997, the number of children adopted from foster care has increased 
significantly, from 28,000 in 1998 to 51,000 in 2004.
  I have been pleased to work with my colleagues to refocus Federal 
child welfare programs, to ensure the best interests of children are 
first. The way to make that happen is to place children in safe, 
permanent loving homes. That is why National Adoption Day and Month are 
so important.
  This year, National Adoption Day will take place on November 18, 
2006, and is designed for communities around the country to highlight 
adoptions. Last year, over 227 events were held in 45 States, which 
finalized the adoption of 3,300 children.
  I have been honored to participate in these events the past several 
years. To be part of such a special occasion reinforces the need for 
further efforts to move children into adoptive homes. I would like to 
applaud the Department of Health and Human Services for their efforts 
in this cause. In 2002, HHS

[[Page 18519]]

launched a series of public service announcements promoting the 
adoption of children eight and older and activated the Web site 
www.adoptUSkids.com. This Web site has helped move 6,000 children into 
adoptive homes.
  The consideration of this resolution today is timely. Tomorrow, the 
Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute will be holding its 
annual Angels in Adoption awards ceremony. This event also seeks to 
highlight those who have opened their hearts and their homes.
  The couple I nominated this year, Pam and Randy Streu of Midland, 
Michigan, have three biological children, and have opened their hearts 
and their home to seven adopted children and almost 50 adoptive foster 
children placements. They deserve special recognition, not just for the 
number of children they have helped, but for helping those children 
that needed the most love. When others may have said the challenge was 
too great, Pam and Randy stepped in, recognizing that each life was 
worth fighting for and that it was about hope and love.
  I first got involved by helping families with their adoption 
proceedings in private practice as a court-appointed lawyer. Since that 
time, I felt that the government should do more to encourage adoption 
and help those in the foster care system. That is why it is so 
important to recognize families who make extraordinary efforts to 
welcome children into their family.
  I thank my colleagues who have helped me move this resolution 
forward, including Mr. Herger, chairman of the Ways and Means Human 
Resources Subcommittee; Mr. McDermott, the ranking member of the 
subcommittee; and Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite and Mr. Oberstar, co-chairs of 
the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. I look forward to 
further working with my colleagues to promote adoption.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak in behalf of H. Res. 959. As 
was described by Congressman Camp, the bill recognizes National 
Adoption Month and National Adoption Day. It commemorates the success 
of the Adoption and Safe Families Act and encourages adoption.
  As Congressman Camp noted, it is particularly timely that the House 
take action on this resolution today, the week we have heroes from 
around the country into Washington celebrating the Angels in Adoption 
gala in recognition of their extraordinary commitment to the adopted 
children that have been brought into their families.
  I want to tell about the North Dakota family of Pat and Michelle 
Beyer. They are in town this week. They have quite a story, like each 
and every family being honored at the Angels in Adoption gala.
  Pat is a North Dakota National Guardsman. He is on leave from his 
service in Iraq. At home, Michelle is raising two naturally born 
children, three adopted children, each of whom have some special needs, 
and this wonderful loving couple is now proceeding with the adoption of 
yet another child with special needs.
  Mr. Speaker, your heart goes out to people like this. They really 
reflect, I believe, the very best of goodwill and compassion in our 
country. I am so proud of them.
  Even as I speak about what they have done to make their home 
available to children and what we recognize with adopted families 
everywhere in terms of the homes they create for children, the 
fundamental and profound truth of adoption, in my view, is that the 
parents benefit far more than they possibly could contribute to the 
children. I know a little bit about what I am talking about on this 
score. These are my children, Kathryn and Scott, adopted from Korea, 
the best thing that ever happened to me. So I care just enormously 
about this resolution.
  I also want to for a moment congratulate my colleague Dave Camp for 
his role in the passage of what has been a very important piece of 
legislation to encourage and move adoption forward.
  I remember very well 10 years ago with C-SPAN on in my office hearing 
floor debate about a proposal that was precisely something that had 
been worrying me for months, because I had been told in North Dakota by 
judges that things were out of whack, that in this business of 
evaluating children in foster care, the best interests of the child 
were being hopelessly confused and sometimes placed secondary to the 
goal of family reunification of completely dysfunctional families.
  Now, maybe Congress had a role in its earlier legislation in giving 
some confusion out there to the social services system, but there was 
one thing we knew, and we knew very clearly, to a person, Republican 
and Democrat, and I also commend Barbara Kennelly, the lead cosponsor 
on the legislation, and that was put the best interests of the children 
first, foremost, exclusively, only. We wanted nothing more than to 
advance the interests of the children.
  The legislation straightened that out, and made no bones about it, 
and then placed substantial expectations on the system with defined 
time limits about children who had been just kicked down the road 
without end in interim foster care arrangements. We wanted them moved 
out of those arrangements and into permanent adoptive status, to the 
extent we possibly could.
  You know, there are a lot of things we do here, and we sure mean the 
best as we do them, and we don't always know how they work. Well, the 
jury is in on this one, and this act has worked, I think perhaps even 
better than I had hoped it might.
  The number of children annually adopted out of the foster care system 
has nearly doubled, from 27,000 in 1996 to 52,000 in 2004. The North 
Dakota situation I had been worrying about, we have gone from 41 
adopted in 1996 to 128 in 2004. We tripled.
  So, again, David Camp, as I told you that day in debate, you have got 
a real fine piece of work here, and I again commend you for the 
leadership you have played in such an important bill.
  Another aspect of this bill, in addition to the time expectation put 
forward by Congress, we actually put some money on the table as 
positive incentives for States that really took the charge to move 
children into permanent adoptive homes. We have paid out more than $200 
million to States since that legislation. I think it has without 
question proven to be an extremely effective and cost-effective use of 
taxpayer dollars. It is also a reminder and something I think we need 
to keep in mind as we look at what else we can do that the carrot needs 
to go along with the stick.
  Another positive bill we passed in advancing legislation is moving 
the tax credit for adoption expenses into law and then increasing it so 
it more appropriately reflects expenses incurred by a family in seeking 
to adopt.
  I have gotten to experience the miracle of adoption in my life, but I 
don't think that in any way you have to have some kind of financial 
status to experience this miracle. We want everybody to be able to 
experience this miracle, if they want to open their homes and raise 
children in an adoptive family. So increasing this tax credit from 
$5,000 to $10,000 is important. My Ways and Means colleague, Nancy 
Johnson, has played an important role on that one.
  Now, for all the platitudes, and they were especially in 
commemorating the successes important to make, I know David doesn't 
feel like we have arrived and gotten the job done. I don't either. We 
have more to do. There are 118,000 foster children today waiting to be 
adopted. To find a loving home for every waiting child, we should focus 
more attention on recruiting adoptive parents and on providing post-
adoption services to help families with ongoing medical, counseling and 
referral needs.
  In the passage of this resolution, I hope there is a bit of this vote 
that represents a recommittal to continuing to explore whatever we can 
do to unite families, parents who want to provide a loving home to 
innocent, precious children that so richly deserve it.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

[[Page 18520]]


  Mr. CAMP of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North 
Dakota for his comments, a distinguished member of the Ways and Means 
Committee.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. 
Ginny Brown-Waite).
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in 
support of this resolution. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 
has proven itself instrumental in increasing adoption in every month of 
the year. The legislation made it easier to adopt children across State 
lines, and it also provided some financial incentives to States to 
improve their foster care systems.
  Prior to adoption of the bill, the number of children in foster care 
and the length of time that they spent in foster care was rapidly 
increasing. In just two decades prior to the mid-1990s, the number of 
children in the foster care system more than doubled. The crisis was 
threatening to overwhelm various State social services departments. 
More importantly, it was brutally unfair to hundreds and thousands of 
children.
  However, since passage of the bill in 1997, the number of children 
adopted out of foster care has actually increased by some 65 percent. 
In 1996, only 31,000 children were adopted. By 2004, that number rose 
to 51,000. It is a start. We certainly need to have more adoptive 
families out there.
  Moreover, not only are more children being adopted, but they are also 
spending less time in the foster care system. However, this Congress 
must not forget that hundreds of thousands of children still remain in 
the foster care system and more still remains to be done. This year 
alone, those older foster care children, some 19,000, will age out of 
the foster care system. Additionally, one in five children will still 
languish in foster care for more than 5 years.

                              {time}  1730

  I am a board member of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption 
Institutes, and it is a very, very worthwhile group out there to 
promote foster parents, good foster parents, as well as adoption.
  I have two beautiful children I gave birth to and one child that I 
adopted. She was an older, hard-to-place child, and usually in the 
adoption system the older children, especially someone designated as 
hard to place, are the last ones to be adopted.
  I certainly hope that this resolution will shine some light on the 
need for more people to step forward and consider adoption of children 
of all ages. In my heart of hearts, I have a very special place for my 
adoptive daughter who is now an adult. She was a special needs child. 
They do require more time, they require more love and certainly a lot 
of structure, and with that plan, they can become very productive 
members of society.
  We must build on the success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 
1997 by continuing to raise awareness about foster youth and adoption.
  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I commend the preceding speaker, our 
colleague, for the personal commitment she has made in this area she 
indicated, and I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Davis).
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  First, I want to commend him and Mr. Camp for their outstanding 
leadership and the passion with which they display relative to this 
issue and their personal involvement.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the significance of the Adoption and 
Safe Families Act of 1997. ASFA provided sweeping changes in Federal 
child welfare law designed to ensure children's safety and to quicken 
permanent placements in the event that a child could not return home.
  By enacting the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, Congress 
recognized the need to align Federal incentives with the desired goal 
of providing abused and neglected children safe, permanent homes. This 
law has helped move States to promote adoption and has helped moved 
children into permanent homes.
  In praising ASFA, I want to take a moment to highlight the need to 
develop similar policies to promote permanency more broadly. ASFA has 
done much to promote adoption, but policymakers should extend ASFA's 
successes to other areas of permanency to address the needs of hundreds 
of thousands of children for whom adoption is not appropriate.
  Using ASFA as a model, the bipartisan Pew Commission on Children in 
Foster Care recommended that Federal policies create subsidized 
guardianship programs and State incentives to promote permanency more 
broadly, be it via reunification, adoption or guardianship.
  Also, we must use our understanding of the implementation of ASFA to 
make it better. I am particularly concerned about the over 29,000 
children who have entered our child welfare system due to parental 
incarceration, most often from nonviolent acts. The parameters set 
forth by ASFA do not align well with those of the criminal justice 
system, leading to a permanent separation of many children from their 
parents and family.
  I encourage my colleagues to consult the wonderful policy brief by 
the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law 
on the topic. ``Rebuilding Families, Reclaiming Lives,'' draws 
attention to hurdles created by the lack of consistency in Federal 
policies with regard to children of incarcerated parents. It also 
offers policy recommendations to promote stability and well-being for 
the children.
  Mr. Speaker, I also take this second to commend the One Church, One 
Family, One Child program in Illinois, who are indeed going to be here 
for the Angels in Adoption gala. They have developed a unique program 
of recruiting families to become foster parents to children coming out 
of correctional institutions. I commend them for that outstanding work 
and note Reverend Parks, Reverend Nelson and Ms. Hunt who have 
developed a fantastic program with the other members of their board.
  Again, I commend the gentlemen for their outstanding work on this 
issue.
  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H. Res. 
959, which recognizes and supports the success of the Adoption and Safe 
Families Act of 1997 in increasing adoptions. I would like to thank the 
gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Camp, for introducing this resolution and 
for his work to enact legislation to improve the lives of abused and 
neglected children.
  The number of children adopted from our nation's foster care system 
has substantially increased since enactment of the Adoption and Safe 
Families Act from 31,000 in 1997 to over 51,000 in 2004. I applaud the 
judges, attorneys, state officials, and other adoption professionals 
who have worked tirelessly to move foster children more quickly into 
permanent, loving families. National Adoption Day in November 2005 
finalized the adoptions of more than 3,300 children from foster care 
and I hope the November 2006 National Adoption Day is even more 
successful.
  There are currently 118,000 foster children available for adoption 
and we must do more to find them loving families. Almost half of these 
children are aged 9 or older and therefore at risk of spending their 
entire childhood in foster care and aging out of the system without a 
permanent home. In 2003, President Bush signed the Adoption Promotion 
Act, which extended the availability of adoption incentive payments to 
the States while promoting the adoption of older children. We will 
continue to support policies that ensure children who cannot be safely 
reunified with their parents are moved quickly into permanent, adoptive 
homes.
  I also wish to recognize the many talented and hardworking staff at 
the Department of Health and Human Services for their outstanding work 
in this area. More than 6,000 children have been placed in adoptive 
homes since the launch of www.adoptuskids.org., a website which 
connects families with waiting children. We must do more to help 
connect would-be adoptive parents with these children to ensure every 
child grows up in a safe, loving family.
  Again, I wish to thank the gentleman from Michigan for introducing 
this resolution. I'd like to personally thank the many child welfare 
professionals and most importantly all the adoptive families across 
America who have made a permanent commitment to improve the lives of 
these vulnerable children. They

[[Page 18521]]

are the real heroes behind the many improvements we have seen in recent 
years.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support H. 
Res. 959 recognizing and supporting the success of the Adoption and 
Safe Families Act of 1997 in increasing adoption and the efforts the 
Act has spurred including National Adoption Day, National Adoption 
Month, and encouraging adoption throughout the year.
  As the Chair of the Congressional Children's Caucus, I especially 
understand the importance of providing a stable, safe, loving home for 
all of our children. Under the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, 
the number of children adopted from foster care has increased 
significantly, with approximately 51,000 children from foster care in 
fiscal year 2004 alone.
  This progress must be recognized, yet we know that there is much more 
work to be done to ensure that every child has a safe, permanent and 
loving home. On a daily basis, in America, children enter the foster 
care system as victims of abuse, neglect or abandonment. Most of them 
will wait at least five years before being adopted. Siblings will be 
separated from each other and most will have moved at least three times 
before being adopted. It is currently an unfortunate fact that one in 
five children will never be adopted, and will be forced out of the 
foster care system at the age of 18 with little or no family support.
  Modeling the successes of the Adoption and Safe Families Act and 
National Adoption Day, states have significantly increased adoptions 
from foster care. National Adoption Day inspires a collective national 
effort to raise awareness to the 119,000 children in foster care 
awaiting permanent, loving families. For the last six years, National 
Adoption Day has seen the dreams of thousands of children come true by 
working with courts, judges, and attorneys to finalize adoptions and 
find permanent, loving homes for foster care children.
  Let me add that I hope that before we recess, we may have the 
opportunity to make a further statement with H.R. 1704, Second Chance 
Act. This important legislation reauthorizes, rewrites, and expands 
crucial provisions regarding adult and juvenile offender reentry 
demonstration projects, in order to address issues of recidivism and 
the effects of the criminal justice system and child welfare services 
on families.
  The welfare of children must continue to be a priority for all 
Americans. Every child deserves a warm, safe, stable home environment. 
It is imperative that we support and recognize the success of the 
Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 of increasing adoption of foster 
care children. Because children are the future, we must support them in 
the present.
  I urge my colleagues to support this important resolution.
  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, seeing no other speakers, I yield back the 
balance of our time.
  Mr. CAMP of Michigan. 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 Michigan (Mr. Camp) that the House suspend the rules and 
agree to the resolution, H. Res. 959.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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