[Pages S12687-S12706]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

FAMILY SELF-SUFFICIENCY ACT

The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, it is with enthusiasm I rise to support
the Democratic alternative on welfare reform. I support it with
enthusiasm because it is firm on work, provides a safety net for
children, brings men back into the picture in terms of child support
and child rearing, and at the same time provides State flexibility and
administrative simplification.
Mr. President, I am the Senate's only professionally trained social
worker. Before elected to public office, my life's work was moving
people from welfare to work, one step at a time, each step leading to
the next step, practicing the principles of tough love.
This is the eighth version of welfare reform that I have been through
as a foster care worker, as a child abuse and neglect worker, a city
councilwoman, Congresswoman, and now U.S. Senator. Each of those
previous efforts in times have failed both under Democratic Presidents
and under Republican Presidents. It failed for two reasons. One, each
reform effort was based on old economic realities, and, second, reform
did not provide tools for the people to move from welfare to work, to
help them get off welfare and stay off welfare.
I believe that welfare should be not a way of life but a way to a
better life. Everyone agrees that today's welfare system is a mess. The
people who are on welfare say it is a mess. The people who pay for
welfare say it is a mess. It is time we fix the system.
Middle-class Americans want the poor to work as hard at getting off
welfare as they themselves do at staying middle class. The American
people want real reform that promotes work, two-parent families, and
personal responsibility.
That is what the Democratic alternative is all about. We give help to
those who practice self-help. Democrats have been the party of sweat
equity and have a real plan for work. Republicans have a plan that only
talks about work and can not really achieve it.
Democrats have produced a welfare plan that is about real work, and
we call it Work First because it does put work first. But it does not
make children second class. Under our plan, from the day someone comes
into a welfare office, they must focus on getting a job and keeping a
job and being able to raise their family.
How do we do this? Well, first, we abolish AFDC. We create a
temporary employment assistance program. We change the culture of
welfare offices from eligibility workers to being empowerment workers.
Instead of only fussbudgeting over eligibility rules, social workers
now become empowerment workers to sit down with welfare applicants to
do a job readiness assessment on what it takes to move them to a job,
stay on a job, and ensure that their children's education and health
needs are being met.
Everyone must sign a parent empowerment contract within 2 weeks of
entering the welfare system. It is an individualized plan to get a job.
The failure of individuals to sign that contract means they cannot get
benefits. Everyone must undertake an immediate and intensive job search
once they have signed that contract. We believe the best job training
is on the job. Your first job leads you to the next job. Each time you
climb a little bit further out of poverty and at the same time we
reward that effort.
Yes, this is a tough plan with tough requirements. It expects
responsibility from welfare recipients. Everyone must do something for
benefits. If you do not sign the contract, you lose the benefits. If
you refuse to accept a job that is offered, you lose the benefits. If,
after 2 years of assistance, you do not have a job in the private
sector, then one must be provided for you in the public sector.
No adult can get benefits for more than 5 years in their adult
lifetime, but if you are a minor, you are able to stay in school and
receive benefits.
So, yes, we Democrats are very tough on work. Everyone must work.
Assistance is time limited and everyone must do something for benefits.
If you do not abide by the contract, then you lose your benefits.
What else do we do? We provide a safety net for children. We not only
want you to be job ready and work force ready, we want you to be a
responsible parent. We want you to be able to ensure that as part of
getting your benefits, your children are in school and that they are
receiving health care.
Once you do go to work, we will not abandon you. We want to make sure
that a dollar's worth of work is worth a dollar's worth of welfare, and
while you are working at a minimum wage, trying to better yourself, we
will provide a safety net for child care for your children, nutritional
benefits will continue, and so will health care. We want to be sure
that while you are trying to help yourself, we are helping your
children grow into responsible adults.
I do not mind telling people that they must work because I do not
mind telling them that they will not only have the tools to go to work,
but that there will be a safety net for children.
This is what the Republican bill does not do. It does not look at the
day-to-day lives of real people and ask what is needed to get that
person into a job.
People we are telling to go to work are not going to be in high-paid,
high-technology jobs. We know that that mother who wants to sign a
contract that requires her to work will be on the edge when it comes to
paying the bills.
She does not have a mother or an aunt or a next door neighbor to
watch her kids. She needs help with child care to move into the work
force.
The Republican bill does not provide enough money to pay for real
child care. Suppose that mother lives in suburban Maryland or Baltimore
city or the rural parts of my State? She does the right thing; she gets
about an entry-level, minimum-wage job.
She is going to make about $9,000 a year, but will have no benefits.
She might take home, after Social Security taxes, $175 a week. But if
her child care costs her $125 a week, that leaves her $50 a week for
rent, food, and clothing.
So that means, under the Republican welfare bill, it is like jumping
off of a

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cliff into the abyss of further and further poverty. Our bill wants to
help people move to a better life. The Republican bill will push them
into poverty through its harsh, punitive approach.
How do we expect this woman to support a family on $50 a week? There
would be no incentive to do that. Welfare reform is about ending the
cycle of poverty and the culture of poverty. Ending the cycle of
poverty is an economic challenge. It means helping create jobs in this
country and then making sure that our country is work force ready and
that welfare recipients are job ready.
But it also must end the culture of poverty, and that is about
personal responsibility, that is about bringing men back into the
picture, that is about tough child support, saying that if you have a
child, you should support that child and rear that child.
We believe that the way families will move out of poverty is the way
families move to the middle class, by bringing men back into the
picture, having two-parent households, by ensuring that there are no
penalties to marriage, to families, or to going to work.
So, Mr. President, that is what the Democratic alternative is. That
is why I support it with the enthusiasm that I do.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am very concerned about the direction in
which the welfare debate is now headed. I come to the floor at this
point in time, not to discuss any specific aspect of welfare reform or
my views on it. I come, not to cast aspersions on the Republican
approach nor to praise the Democratic approach. But I wanted to express
my concern that the welfare debate is headed in absolutely the wrong
direction, the direction of partisan bickering.
As far as I know, there has been no real effort by the other side, or
by this side, to try to work out a compromise solution. We have had our
task force. The Democrats have been talking about their approach. I
understand the Republicans have had their groups talking about their
approach. We now have a bill on the floor. We have a Democratic
substitute. Then there is the Republican proposal.
I must tell you, I think this is absolutely the wrong way to go. I
think welfare reform is much too important to the American people and
to the taxpayers to be caught up in some kind of partisan warfare.

We are tougher than you.
No, we are tougher than you.
We care about kids more than you.
No, we care about kids more than you.
We are going to give the States more flexibility.
No, we are going to give the States more flexibility.

It pains me to see this happen because I believe there is enough
similarity between the Republican bill and the Democratic bill to work
out a compromise, but not if it is done in the heat of partisan
bickering, which I believe is starting to take place right now on the
welfare bill.
Several years ago my State of Iowa decided to do something about the
welfare problem in our State. We set up task forces, set up pilot
projects around the State to try to find out what would work and what
would not work. This went on for several years. As a result of these
experiments, the State legislature in Iowa a few years ago pulled
together a welfare reform bill and passed it through the Iowa
legislature.
That bill was passed with the support of conservative Republicans and
liberal Democrats. As I have often said, it was supported by Pat
Robertson conservative Republicans and Jesse Jackson liberal Democrats.
Only one person voted against it, because it was put together in a
bipartisan fashion. Folks from both sides of the aisle worked together
to fashion a legitimate welfare reform bill.
It passed and was signed into law by Governor Branstad. We have now
had about 2 years of experience with it and it is working. We now have
the distinction in Iowa that we have a higher percentage of people on
welfare who work than any State in the Nation--Iowa. We doubled the
number of people on welfare who work. Doubled--went up by almost 100
percent. Our caseload is down. And the expenditures per case are also
down by about 10 percent.
So the number of people on welfare is down. The cost per case is
down. The number of people working is up.
Last of all, of the States that have gone out and tried to do welfare
reform, Iowa, according to a New York Times article that I read, Iowa
is the only State that has actually cut people off of welfare. It is
the only State that said, ``Here is a contract. We signed the contract.
If you, welfare recipient, do not live up to your part of the contract,
it ends.'' Iowa has done that.
I do not believe Wisconsin or any other State has been touted as
having done such a thing. So it is working in Iowa.
I say that because it was not done in a partisan fashion. It was done
in a bipartisan fashion. I believe for welfare reform to work
nationally, it must also be done in a bipartisan fashion. That is why
it pains me to see what is happening on the floor of the Senate today.
I was looking in the Congress Daily of Wednesday, August 9. It quoted
the majority leader, Senator Dole. It said that Senator Dole said that
President Clinton and he were talking privately a couple of weeks ago
about working out a bipartisan solution on welfare reform. Dole said,
``He pulled me aside and asked me if there was a chance and
acknowledged that there are some similarities between the Democratic
and GOP bills.''
I took that at face value. So on that same day, August 9, I wrote a
letter to the majority leader and to the minority leader, Senator
Daschle. I am going to read for the Record what I said in that letter.
I said:

Dear Mr. Majority Leader: I am writing you regarding our
extremely important efforts to reform the welfare system. We
clearly have agreement that the current welfare system is
failing those on it and taxpayers who have to support it and
it needs fundamental reform. You have put forward a
comprehensive reform plan, the Democratic leader has done the
same, Senator Bond and I have introduced a plan as has
Senator Gramm and other of our colleagues. And while there
are significant differences between our plans, I feel
strongly that there is enough common ground that there is no
good reason why we can't fashion a bipartisan approach that
would garner overwhelming support in the Senate and among the
American people.
In Iowa, we did just that. Democrats and Republicans worked
together, ironed out their differences and came up with a
bipartisan plan. It passed with just one dissenting vote in
the legislature and was signed into law by Governor Branstad.
And it is working. The number of welfare recipients working
and on their way off welfare is up 93 percent. And welfare
awards and total payments are down.
I feel strongly that we should not let welfare reform fall
victim to politics. As I'm sure you agree, the American
people don't care what political party reforms welfare; they
just want it done. They want to be assured that their tax
dollars are being spent responsibly. I'm concerned that if we
don't begin now working together to iron out our differences
that when we come back in September we may be no closer to
agreement than we are now and the chance for bipartisan
agreement lost. Therefore, I ask that before we leave for
recess you and the Democratic Leader appoint a bipartisan
task force to begin work on forging a welfare reform bill
that has strong support across party lines. I believe this
would be constructive and could well lead to a package of
tough, effective reforms emphasizing work of which we can all
be proud.
Thank you for your attention to my request. I look forward
to your reply. I am sending a similar letter to the
Democratic Leader.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I did not hear back from either the
majority leader or minority leader. I do not say that in any way
derogatorily. I know we have been gone. People have been busy. That is
not my point. My point is that I still urge the majority leader and the
minority leader to step back just one step. I request that the majority
leader appoint six people and that the minority leader appoint six
people and that they take the remainder of this week and this weekend
to see if we can work out a bipartisan approach, to see if they can
agree on something and bring it back to us the first of next week.
I believe this would be the best approach to take. I think we could
step back from this partisan bickering that we are going to encounter
here in the next few days. It is going to come. I think we already hear
the opening strains of it--this bill is better than yours, this and
that. The American people are sick and tired of that kind of partisan
bickering, especially when

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it concerns welfare. I believe there are enough similarities that we
can work out a bipartisan agreement. It will not be all of what we
want. It will not be all of what you want. But I believe it can garner
enough support to be a truly bipartisan effort.
On August 7, I read again for the Record, Senator Breaux from
Louisiana had the following statement. He said:

``I think we ought to work together.
So we have a decision to make as to whether we are going to
cooperate and work on this together--

Meaning welfare reform.

or make political points and get nothing done. That is an
option. But if that option is exercised, I suggest the real
losers are the American people and the American taxpayer. We
will make short-term political points for short-term
political gain. But in the long run, the real losers will be
the taxpayers and those who are on welfare who will not have
had an opportunity to have a program passed in a bipartisan
fashion.

Mr. President, as I said, the State of Iowa, of which I am proud to
represent, did it in a bipartisan fashion. It showed that it could be
done and showed that it can work.
Why is it that we cannot do it here? Why can't the majority leader
and the minority leader appoint five or six people each? We have
business on our calendar that we can spend the rest of the week on. We
have appropriations bills and other things that we can consider in the
meantime.
I repeat: There has been no serious effort in the Senate to reach
some kind of bipartisan cooperation on welfare reform. I am not blaming
that side. I am not blaming our side. I am just saying that it is a
fact. Neither side has tried to reach across the aisle to form a
bipartisan consensus. But I think that is what we ought to do.
I suppose maybe it is too late now. I do not know. All I can say is,
I take this time to express my concern about the direction this debate
is headed.
I wish an amendment were possible or something. I guess the tree is
full. No amendments are possible. I wish there was some way we could
express ourselves with a Sense-of-the-Senate resolution to get a
bipartisan group together to work on this.
I think it is too bad. I think the losers are going to be the
American taxpayers and the losers are going to be people on welfare
because it is going to be caught up in partisan bickering. Partisan
shots being taken here on something I consider to be equally as
important as the health care debate or anything else we debated around
here.
I guess maybe I would not feel so strongly about it had I not seen
what had been done in the State of Iowa 3 years ago when both sides
reached across the aisle and worked out a bipartisan welfare reform
program. And the fruits have shown that it is working.
I do not think any welfare reform bill can work unless it has that
same kind of bipartisan support. So again I call upon the majority
leader and I call upon the minority leader to step back one step,
appoint six people from each side, and let us take the rest of the week
to see whether or not we can reach some kind of bipartisan agreement
and bring it back on the floor next week. If we could do that, we would
save ourselves a lot of time and we would save a lot of partisan
bickering, and I think the American people could at last be justly
proud of something that the Senate is going to do this year.
Mr. President, I want to take some time here for a second, because I
want to demonstrate what happened in the State of Iowa with welfare
reform. As soon as I get my easel set up here, I want to show it for
the record here. I apologize to the President for taking the time, but
I want to show graphically basically what had been done in the State of
Iowa here.
First of all, in the State of Iowa, these lines show what has
basically happened with our cash welfare grants. The yellow line is
1994; the green line is 1993; the blue line is 1992. We can see that
the cash welfare grants have basically stayed about stable over these
years.
Look at what is happening now under the new programs since Iowa
passed this. It is going down, constantly going down. The total
expenditures have gone down considerably since we passed our welfare
reform bill. This is one measure of how it is succeeding.
Now, again, I mentioned we now have the distinction in Iowa of having
a higher percentage of people on welfare who work than any State in the
Nation. Prior to the welfare reform bill passing, we had about 18
percent of the people on welfare working. We now have about 35 percent.
I mentioned it is about a 100 percent improvement on that, people on
welfare working. They get the jobs skills they need to get off welfare.
So in terms of workfare, it is working. Here is the caseload.
I think this chart is interesting, Mr. President, because it shows
what everyone in Iowa understood. Both Republicans and Democrats,
conservatives and liberals, understood that in changing the system,
there was going to be an increase in the caseload immediately. Everyone
knew that, and they accepted that. Because, for example, prior to this
point in time, if you had an automobile worth more than $1,500, you
were not eligible for welfare. We took a lesson from the State of Utah.
Utah had gotten a waiver to allow persons to have a car valued to
$8,000 and still be on welfare. We raised ours to $3,000. So there are
a lot of people that maybe had a car worth $2,000 or $2,500 or $3,000
before that were not eligible. Now they are eligible.
So this is why this caseload went up. We knew that was going to
happen in the beginning. But we were confident enough in our bipartisan
approach that we knew once that happened initially, it would come down
drastically. And that is exactly what has happened. Our total caseload
over the last 2 years has gone from around 36,000 down to around
34,000. So the number of people, the total number of people on welfare
has dropped after that first initial increase.
I mentioned the average grants were down. The average grant per
family has gone now from $373 down to $336. That is over a 10-percent
decrease, I guess, in the average grant per recipient.
So the caseloads have gone down, and the average per family has gone
down, and the number of people on welfare has declined. I think this is
really the most important one of all: The number of people on welfare
who are working has almost doubled.
So, again, that is what happened in Iowa. But I think it only
happened because people on both sides of the aisle got together and did
it in a bipartisan fashion. And that is what I hope we will do here. I
do not think it is too much to ask that--today is what, Wednesday--
Thursday, Friday, over the weekend, next Monday, a bipartisan group
from both sides of the aisle get together, appointed by the respective
leaders, and report back a bipartisan approach to this.
If not, then I am afraid the remainder of this week and probably the
first of next week, we are going to be involved in some very serious
partisan bickering--who is going to be toughest, who is going to be the
best for kids, and who is going to be the most lenient on States, on
giving States flexibility. There will be a lot of hot rhetoric and a
lot of partisanship. And in the end, the American taxpayers and the
people on welfare are going to lose.
So I just make one final plea to the majority leader and to the
minority leader to appoint six people each, work it out in a bipartisan
fashion, and report it next week. And let us take it off the partisan
table.
I yield the floor.
Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I think we all would like to have a
bipartisan approach to welfare reform. I, for one, am a little
discouraged.
I remember the President's rhetoric in the campaign when he talked
about changing welfare as we know it. For 2\1/2\ years, as my
colleagues will remember, we waited to see the President's welfare
reform bill, to see how he was going to change welfare as we know it.
And when we finally, after 2\1/2\ years of prodding, got to see the
bill, it had three characteristics that came as a shock to most people.
First, it spent more money; second, it provided more benefits to more
welfare recipients; and, third, it hired more Government bureaucrats. I
do not believe that is what America has in mind when America is talking
about reforming welfare.
Now, in my mind, there are really two issues in welfare reform. One
issue, and the most important issue, had to

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do with the people who are involved. I want to change the system
because never in history have we taken so much money from people that
are pulling the wagon and given so much to people riding in the wagon,
and made both groups worse off simultaneously.
Since 1965, we have spent $5.4 billion on our current welfare system,
and since nobody knows what a trillion dollars is, let me try to
convert it into English. If you took all the buildings, all the plants,
all the equipment, and all the tools of all the workers in America,
they would be worth slightly less than what we have spent on all means-
tested welfare programs since 1965.
What has been the result of this massive expenditure of money? Well,
the result has been that we have made mothers more dependent, we have
driven fathers out of the household, and we have denied people access
to the American dream. If we love these people, if we want them to be
our equals, not just in theory but in fact, it seems to me that we have
to reform the welfare system. And I am hopeful in the end we will have
bipartisan votes in making that happen.
Here are the reforms that I think we need. I think we need a
mandatory work requirement. I think able-bodied men and women on
welfare ought to get out of the wagon and help the rest of us pull. If
the best job somebody can get in the private sector pays $4 an hour--
there is dignity in working at $4 an hour--we can supplement their
income, but they will be contributing toward their own independence,
toward their own well-being.
If somebody cannot get a job in the private sector, then they can
pick up trash along our streets, they can help clean up our parks, they
can wash windows on our public buildings. But, again, they will be
participating in the communities they live in. They will be part of
building a better country. And I believe that they will be richer,
freer, and happier for it. I think able-bodied men and women ought to
have to work the number of hours that their welfare check will bring at
the minimum wage.
When we started this debate, which has largely been a debate among
Republicans, unfortunately, we did not have a binding mandatory work
requirement in the bill, we did not have a pay-for-performance
provision in the bill. So from the point of view of the Federal
Government and a mandatory work policy, we had a peculiar situation
where we asked people to work; but if they did not work, we did not
have a mechanism that took away their check.
I am proud to say that has been changed. We now have a very strong
work requirement. I am very proud of that. I am very supportive of it.
The second thing we need to do is to stop inviting people to come to
America to go on welfare. People ought to come to America with their
sleeves rolled up ready to go to work, not with their hand held out
ready to go on welfare.
The original bill that came out of the Finance Committee continued to
invite people to come to America to go on welfare and literally would
have allowed someone to come to America today as a legal immigrant and
go on welfare tomorrow.
I am proud to say that after a tremendous amount of work, that that
is something that we have changed. Our bill now has people come to
America to work, not to go on welfare, and I think it is a dramatic
step forward.
We do have a dispute about how large the scope ought to be of block
granting. Should we just give AFDC back to the States and a few
training programs, which is what the current bill does, or should we
give food stamps, housing subsidies, all training programs back to the
States and let the States run them? That is something we are going to
have to settle on the floor of the Senate. I think the more leeway we
give to the States, the more flexibility we give to the States, the
better we are going to do.
The remaining issue that prevents us from having a consensus among
Republicans in the Senate--which is an indispensable ingredient, in my
opinion, to building a bipartisan consensus and passing this--bill, is,
what do we do about illegitimacy? I believe this is the biggest problem
in the bill.
One-third of all the babies born in America last year were born out
of wedlock. Under the current trend, illegitimacy could be the norm and
not the exception in America by the turn of the century. I think
anybody who is not frightened by this prospect fails to understand that
no great civilization has ever risen in history that was not built on
strong families. No civilization has ever survived the destruction of
its families, and I do not believe America is going to be the first.
We have a system today that subsidizes illegitimacy. If someone is on
welfare and they take a job, they lose their welfare. If they marry
someone who has a job, they lose their welfare. But if they have
another baby, they get more cash payments.
I am totally committed to the principle that we have to break the
back of illegitimacy in America. We have to give people incentives
under the welfare system to be more responsible. We have to stop giving
people more and more money to have more and more children on welfare. I
think this is an indispensable ingredient.
No one is saying that when children are here and they are needy that
we are not going to help them. No one is saying we are not going to
provide children with services and with goods. But what we are saying
is, it is suicidal to go on giving larger and larger cash payments to
people who simply have more children on welfare in return for more and
more cash money. That is a system that has to be changed.
We also have to do something about the perverse incentives that exist
today where a 16-year-old can escape her mother, can get almost $14,000
in pretax equivalent worth of income simply by having a baby. By having
a baby, they can qualify for AFDC, food stamps, housing subsidies, gain
independence of their mother and then gain additional cash payment by
having more and more children.
This is a system that has to be changed, and, again, the objective is
to change behavior. When babies are born, we want to help them. We want
to give them services, we want to give them goods, but we are not going
to continue to pay people cash money in return for having more and more
children on welfare.
This is an area where there is a deep division in our party. I
believe there is room for consensus. I am willing to work with other
Republicans and with Democrats to find that consensus. But we are not
going to end welfare dependency in America unless we want to deal with
illegitimacy. This illegitimacy problem creates a permanent demand for
welfare, and if we are going to deal with the problem, if we are going
to end welfare dependency in America, we are going to have to do it by
addressing illegitimacy. You cannot reform welfare, you cannot, in the
President's words, ``end welfare as we know it'' unless you are going
to deal with illegitimacy.
I am committed to the principle that we have to end welfare as we
know it. I share the President's commitment. His program does not
fulfill his commitment, something not unusual in Washington, DC, but I
believe illegitimacy has to be addressed. A welfare bill that does not
address illegitimacy is not worthy of its name.
I yield the floor.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I thank the Presiding Officer.
Mr. President, I urge the Senate to improve the welfare reform bill
before us by voting for this very important amendment known as ``Work
First.''
Before the August recess, it was a relief that the majority leader
agreed to wait until September for us to debate welfare reform so we
have some time. This is not a subject where we should pretend that
legislating is like ordering fast-food. Welfare reform is about very
serious issues--the budgets for the States we represent and how many
billions of dollars will be spent or cut from those budgets; the rules
qualifying families for assistance or denying them assistance; the
safety net for children, and whether it will survive; and other
difficult questions about taxpayers' dollars, people's lives, and yes,
values. The Senate should take the time to produce legislation that
justifies the word ``reform'' next to the word ``welfare.''
I hope that the recess provided time for each Senator to reflect on
these

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major questions that we have to answer when we act on welfare reform. I
hope we will do that with our heads and our hearts. I hope we will
think about the stakes involved in welfare reform, for the people we
represent, for our States, and for children.
For a long time, I assumed welfare reform would be one of history's
endeavors that both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate would
produce together. After all, we presumably want changes in the welfare
system to take root and bring about real, long-lasting results that
most Americans expect from all of us.
And let me be clear, the Congress and President should deliver on
welfare reform. It has been 7 years since we enacted any kind of
significant change to the welfare system. We know it is time to attack
the problems with welfare again, with much more emphasis on personal
responsibility and on work. This is our chance, but with an obligation
to deal with realities.
When I think of what West Virginians expect from welfare reform, the
answers are in this amendment, the Work First plan. It does something
Democrats sometimes have a hard time doing. We want to bury the past.
Out with the confusing name for welfare assistance, AFDC. Out with
welfare's invitation to some people to live on the dole forever, while
their fellow citizens struggle to make ends meet by working and
scrimping. Out with the excuses for not working when you can work.
Simply put, Work First ends welfare as we know it, and creates a new
but temporary assistance program for parents with children. A
fundamental change will be made from the first day: Work First requires
parents to sign a tough contract--a Parental Empowerment Contract--in
order to get benefits. This way, every parent will know from the
beginning that the rules and expectations are completely different.
Work First will require work from every able-bodied parent, but also
offer job placement, training when necessary, and child care so that
the work requirement can be met in the real world.
Work First is tough, but fair. We expect parents to work, but we also
expect America to still be a place that protects its children--the
majority of our population that gets help through welfare spending, and
who are getting forgotten and ignored in the political halls and talk
shows where welfare is debated. As any parent knows, children need
decent shelter, clothing and food, and Work First includes the
mechanism--through vouchers--to care for some of these needs. We should
not be punishing innocent children because of their parent's
irresponsibility or bad luck.
Work First also retains the partnership between the Federal
Government and States. The country as a whole has a stake in the future
of each and every child regardless of where a poor child is born--in
the hollows of West Virginia or the neighborhoods of Houston, Chicago,
or Kansas City.
Also, simply converting welfare spending into 50 or more block grants
for the States is not exactly real reform. I can completely understand
why some Governors in office for the next few years are eager for the
money. I was a Governor for 8 years, but I also remember what happened
in my State when the block grants created by Congress in the early
1980's stopped keeping up with need, by design. That is when Governors
have to find other programs to cut or raise local taxes or just watch
people and small children show up on the grates.
Having been a Governor, I want to see a welfare reform bill pass that
gives States a lot of flexibility. But I also think some basic
principles should hold in every State. The entire country should take
on the same challenge to promote work, responsibility, and protect
children.
This alternative before the Senate, Work First, is tough where
Americans say they want welfare to be tough. Actually, back in 1982,
when I was Governor, I struck a tough, but fair deal with many of the
adults getting welfare in West Virginia. With our high unemployment
then, I said if you cannot get a paying job but still need a welfare
check, fine, work for that check. The term is ``workfare.'' West
Virginia's experience is also a reminder that we do not have to
demonize everyone on welfare. Many of the West Virginians in my State's
workfare program said they liked the approach. They hated having to
resort to welfare, and with something productive to do--from cleaning
streets to jobs in government offices--they felt better about
themselves. Again, let us be sure we remember that a lot of people are
on welfare out of desperation. If they can get the basics--certain
skills, some information, some child care--they are going to work.
I know it is tempting to just pretend that everything will get better
if we just send a check, with no-strings attached, to Governors. It
would be nice to pretend that Governors will just take care of it. It
is not that easy.
I do not think we should talk down to Americans about what it takes
to get real results from welfare reform. Poor mothers and fathers need
child care just as much as the middle class. Think about it--we put
parents in jail for leaving their children alone at home.
Some poor Americans simply have to get more education and job skills,
too, so they qualify for jobs that earn a decent living for the rest of
their lives. And when it is time to cut off the parents, it is not
right to pretend children do not exist.
There are differences between the majority leader's bill before the
Senate and this Work First amendment. Differences with real, human
consequences. Differences in how honest we are willing to be about what
it will take to deliver on the promises and the political rhetoric of
welfare reform.
Americans are not exactly crusading for block grants as the
prescription for welfare. They are expecting more than just a different
place to send the money. We are here to think about the kind of country
we can be and should be. We are here to be honest about what it will
take to move millions of poor Americans from welfare to independence.
And I think we are here to regard every child in this country as
important as the next one, no matter what State he or she happens to
grow up in.
The Democratic plan, Work First, has some essential elements,
including honesty about what it takes to achieve real change in the
welfare system and how to keep children from being the ones punished. I
hope it will get a serious look from everyone in this body over the
next days or however long it takes us to finish this legislative debate
on welfare. If there is a middle-ground, let us find it and work out
our differences. And I urge every Governor to take a close look at
these issues again--and think about the next 10 to 20 years in our
States, not just the next couple of years. If welfare reform turns out
to be Congress' slick, painless way to slash the Federal budget and
leave States holding the bag, we are leaving some painful work for our
successors and for the people in our States.
We still have a chance to pass a bill to be proud of and one that is
honest about welfare, poverty, parental responsibility and other
values, what it takes to work, and the children, who are two out of
three people on welfare. That is what should determine our votes and
action before reporting to Americans that we have passed a bill that
actually reforms welfare.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator withhold?
Mr. CHAFEE. I will be glad to.
Mr. BREAUX. I ask the Presiding Officer, what is the order of the day
at this point?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are no restrictions on debate.
Mr. BREAUX. No one is in charge of time?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no control of time.
The Senator from Louisiana is recognized.
Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I will take this time in order to make
some comments about where we are and what I hope the ultimate result
will be.
I want to start off by saying there is no disagreement that the
welfare situation in this country is a mess. There is no argument from
any Democrat that I know who would stand up on the floor of the Senate
and say welfare programs are just fine and we should not do anything to
change any of them.
I think most Americans, whether they be independents, Democrats or

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Republicans, would agree with the statement that welfare does not work
very well for those who are on it, nor does it work very well for those
who are paying for it. It is a program that really cries out for major
reform. I think that is what this body is charged with doing, coming up
with a reform package that we can send to this President that he will
sign, so when this Congress draws to a closure, we can say one thing
that we did that will benefit future generations and the very stability
of this country is that this Congress, when we had a chance, was able
to come together in a bipartisan fashion to reform the current welfare
system, which we all agree does not work.
It does not work, as I said, for the people who are on it nor for the
people who are paying for it. Therefore, there is no disagreement on
the fact that we have a major problem facing us and that we should do
something about it.
Then, of course, the question that divides us is how do we go about
reforming the system? Some have said we in Washington, working with the
States in the past, have not solved the problem so we are going to give
it all to the States. We are just going to walk away from the problem.
Let us think of a phrase we are going to call it. How about block
grants? That sounds pretty good. People like that term. Let us say
welfare reform is going to be a block grant. I think most Americans
would say, ``What do you mean?'' They will say, ``The Federal
Government has not solved the problems, so we are going to let the
States do it.'' I guess most people would say that makes sense. The
Federal Government has not solved it so let the States do it.
Let me talk for a moment about that. This is a problem that cannot be
solved by the Federal Government here in Washington by ourselves, nor
can it be solved by the State governments, nor the county governments
nor the city governments, nor in my State of Louisiana by the parish
governments by themselves. This is a problem that cries out for all
branches of government, Federal, State and local, working together, to
come up with a real solution.
Block grants are like taking all the problems that we have with the
welfare program and putting them in a box, then wrapping it all up,
tying a bow around it, and then mailing that box of problems to the
States, saying: Here, it is yours. It is a block grant.
It is a block grant of problems with less money to help solve those
problems. That, I think, is not a solution. It is an additional
problem. The real solution is to say that each State, of course, is
different. I have heard my Republican colleagues say that. I totally
agree with that. States should have the authority to be innovative.
What works in my State of Louisiana may not work well in the State of
California. What works well in New York may not work well in Florida or
Louisiana or any other State. So, clearly, each State has an absolute
right and a need to be able to be inventive and to be able to come up
with solutions to the problems that are unique and will work in that
State that may not work in some other State.
But that does not mean the Federal Government walks away from any
responsibility to participate in solving the problem. What some would
suggest is that a block grant means we in Washington are going to have
to raise the money and pass the taxes and then ship the money to the
States and say, ``Do what you want with it, it is a block grant; no
restrictions, almost no guidelines, and spend it as you want.'' That is
an abdication of our responsibility as legislators who are looking
after the interests of the American taxpayer.
I admit we in Washington have certainly not solved the problem by
ourselves very well. I admit the States have not solved the problem by
themselves. Therefore, I would argue that any solution has to be a
joint venture, if you will, a partnership, if you will, between the
States coming up with their best ideas about what fits and the Federal
Government coming up with our ideas and the financial help in order to
solve those problems. It has to be a partnership. It cannot be a
walking away and shipping the problem to the States. That is the first
point I want to make.
The second point is that the States have to participate. We use this
phrase, ``State maintenance of effort.'' There are some, particularly
my Republican colleagues, who advocate we are going to let the States
pretty well do what they want with this block grant but then we are not
going to require them to put up any money.
States have always, in the true partnership, had to participate in
solving the problem. That means raising local money through their tax
system, putting up a portion of the money going into the welfare
program so it can be used to help solve the problem, matching it with
Federal funds. The Republican proposal, as I understand it, says no, we
are not going to do that. The State does not have to put up anything if
they do not want to. They can just walk away from the problem
financially and say, ``We are going to take all the money from the
Federal Government. We are going to do what we want with it. And, by
the way, the money we used to spend on welfare, maybe we will pave the
roads this year, or maybe we will give all the State employees a raise
this year. Maybe we will build some bridges this year. But we are not
going to use it for the people who are in poverty in our own State.''
That is not a partnership. That is an abdication of the
responsibility that I think that we have, as Federal legislators and
State legislators, to work together to solve the problem.
There should be a clear maintenance of effort by the States. We in
Washington cannot say you have no obligation to do anything. That is a
defect that I think is very clear in their proposal which needs to be
worked on. We will offer amendments to say the States have to be able
to participate in helping us solve the problem. We cannot be
responsible for raising all the money and the States have no
requirement to do so and expect that to solve the welfare problem in
this case.
In addition, one of the other concerns I have is that the legislation
the Republicans are proposing takes middle-income job training programs
and makes them into welfare programs. Why, I ask, is it appropriate for
programs that work to help dislocated workers, to help in vocational-
technical training schools that train people, students in this country,
programs that are used for dislocated workers who everyday are finding
their job is taken away from them through downsizing, and we have
programs to help retrain and relocate those people--why are we taking
those type of programs, which are basically programs that have done a
wonderful job to help middle-income families in this country, and make
them into welfare programs? I think that is a serious, serious mistake.
Do we need to reform those programs? Do we need to consolidate them?
Absolutely. But we do not need to turn job training programs into
welfare programs. It does not fit. It cannot be forced to fit. You
cannot put a round peg in a square hole no matter how hard you push,
without doing grave damage to the block that you are trying to push it
into. And the same thing, I think, happens here.
Their proposal tells middle-income families that have had to get
retraining because of dislocation and being laid off that all of a
sudden those programs that were meant for you are going to be used by
welfare recipients and you are going to be left out. What about the
middle-income families that those programs were designed for when they
find out these programs all of a sudden are going to be turned into
welfare programs? I think it is bad policy. It needs to be corrected.
It is not a solution to the problem. In fact, it aggravates the
problem, and it needs to be addressed.
Child care is another concern I have that I think we have to address
very seriously. How do you tell a teenage mother with two children, we
are going to make you go to work but, by the way, there is no money for
child care? There is not a Governor that we have talked to, Republican,
Democrat, independent, or maybe not certain what they are, that has not
said that this is a very serious problem. It is a serious defect in the
Republican proposal, to require the States to put three times more
people to work but to give them less financial assistance in order to
make it happen, to give them less money or in fact no additional money
whatsoever to pay for child care.

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What is going to happen to the children? Who is going to take care of
a 2-year-old or a 1-year old if we put the mother into a job, which I
think is absolutely essential? The best social program we can pass is a
good job. But with that requirement that someone goes to work, there is
going to be an obligation somewhere that somebody does something with
the children. Are they going to be left home alone, unsupervised,
getting into trouble, or causing more problems from the standpoint of
health than they were before?
So they have a very serious defect in the sense that the child care
provisions are very deficient. It is one thing to say we are going to
put three times more people to work. But you cannot do that unless you
address what is going to happen to the child care provisions. That
needs to be addressed. It needs to be worked on. It cannot in fact be a
real reform bill unless child care is addressed.
Another issue is the so-called family cap. I have heard some Members
give speeches that it is time for people who have been riding in the
wagon to get out of the wagon and start helping pull the wagon. That is
a nice little phrase, and it sounds pretty good. But when you are
talking about throwing babies and children out of the wagon into the
street, that is not what America is all about. That is not what this
country stands for. Sure, make the people who can afford to pull the
wagon, who are strong enough to pull the wagon, go to work. There is no
problem with that. But do not throw babies and children out of the
wagon into the street and say that is welfare reform. That is not.
Children and babies do not ask to be born. They did not ask to come
into this world. There is a parent somewhere--in fact, two--that had
something to do with bringing that child into this world. Punish them.
Require them to go to work. Require them to take training. Require them
to be responsible. Force them to live in adult supervision. Force them
to live with their parent or parents if there are some. But do not
penalize the innocent child who did not ask to be born. What kind of a
country are we that we are going to say if you are a teenage mother and
you have another child, you are not going to get any help for the
child? Why penalize the child? That is creating more problems, not
solving any problem.
So I suggest that this is a major defect with the Republican proposal
that has to be addressed. I cannot imagine any Member of this
institution saying they are going to reform welfare by telling a
newborn baby that it is not going to get any help because its mother
made a mistake and it has been born into this world, and they cannot
afford to take care of it. So it is out of luck. Go into an orphanage,
or be put up for adoption. I think we have to be wiser than that in
seeking solutions to what welfare reform ultimately has to be all
about.
So that does not solve the problem. That is a defect in their
proposal to say that we are going to solve the illegitimacy problem in
this country by terminating any assistance to people with babies who
are born into this world. That does not stop illegitimacy. That does
not help solve the problem. It creates more problems, not less. It
absolutely has to be addressed.
While I said what I think is wrong with the pending Republican
proposal, I do think that there is a recognition in a bipartisan
fashion that we have to do something. Our plan is called Work First. It
abolishes AFDC. It starts off by saying there is no more AFDC. Every
time a person comes into a welfare office, they have to sign an
employment contract in order to receive any benefits. That contract is
going to require them to do certain things. It is going to start moving
them into the work force.
We put time limits on how long someone can be on welfare assistance
in this country, but we protect the child. We protect the children. We
protect the babies who are born into this world. Require the mother to
live at home, or require the mother to live in an adult-supervised home
if there are no parents. Require them to move into the work force. Put
on time limits. Yes, do all of those things. But, yes, also provide
child care as we require people to move into the workplace, as we do
that.
So it is one thing to sound tough and to talk tough. But as we all
know, talk is cheap. It does not solve the problem. This problem is not
going to be solved on the cheap. It is going to be solved only with
thoughtful ideas and tax dollars being spent more wisely than we have
spent them in the past in a recognition that we do need to make some
dramatic changes.
I want to say something else, too. I will conclude with this: As I
said in the beginning, this is a problem that the Federal Government
cannot solve by itself and the States cannot solve by themselves. This
is a problem that Democrats cannot solve by ourselves and Republicans
cannot solve by themselves because we do not have enough votes, quite
frankly, to pass our bill without some help from the other side. On the
other hand, I suggest that the Republican Party does not have enough
votes to pass this bill that will be signed into law without our
participation.
So we are sort of joined together because we have to be. We have a
choice here. We can start talking to each other. We can start
cooperating on some of these key issues that I mentioned. We can see
where we can come together and devise a proposal that makes sense that
can be adopted. It may not be everything that I want or the
distinguished senior Senator from New York, Senator Moynihan, the
manager of the bill, wants; or it may not be everything that the
Republican leader or Senator Chafee, who is on the floor, wants. But I
think there is enough common ground here to help address these
differences in a way that we get a compromise that works. By the way,
compromise is not a dirty word. It is a coming together of different
opinions in order to accomplish something that makes sense.
Therefore, when we talk about fair compromises in the interest of
solving the ultimate problem, that is what this body is supposed to do.
Very few times in this world in anything do we get our way all the way
all the time. And this legislation, welfare reform, which is so
important, is an area that cries out for some bipartisan cooperation,
working out our differences, because I am afraid that if we do not do
that, we will do nothing. If we are not willing to meet somewhere in
the middle on these difficult problems, we will have accomplished
absolutely nothing.
Some will say, ``But we have a good issue for the next election.'' I
suggest that the best issue for all of us is passing a real welfare
reform bill that gets the job done.
I think all of our colleagues on this side are ready, are willing,
and I think we are able to sit down in the sense of compromise and come
up with a proposal that in fact gets the job done.
With that, at this time, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, may I just express the appreciation of
all Members on this side, and I think on both sides, for the thoughtful
comments of the Senator from Louisiana. He has worked so very hard on
the bill now before us as a second-degree amendment that Senator
Daschle and he and Senator Mikulski have put together. It is an effort
to meet concerns that are shared on both sides of the aisle. He is
right. We have succeeded in moving this subject forward when we have
been together.
The Family Support Act passed out of this Chamber 97 votes to 1. We
had a clear consensus, a clear set of agreements. And we have been
hearing repeatedly on the floor of programs that State governments have
put in place which seem to be taking hold.
The Senator from Iowa was speaking just a few minutes ago about the
proposal of Iowa, which passed, as he said, 98 to 2 in their
legislature. That is the program under that Family Support Act with
bipartisan support that came from this Chamber out to the States. We
have something to show. It would seem such a loss to give all of that
up at this point.
I thank the Senator. I yield the floor.
Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. CHAFEE. I want to join with the Senator from New York. Those were
very thoughtful remarks by the Senator from Louisiana. I hope we can
get a bill out of this Senate that will really

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make some real progress in welfare reform. So I think the Senator from
Louisiana has made a constructive contribution. I express my
appreciation to him.
Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I want to add my kudos to the Senator
from Louisiana for his comments. I share his sentiment that welfare
reform needs to be bipartisan in nature. And we have had discussions
off the floor that both sides have moved from the initial introductions
of legislation, even here in the Senate, and have moved more together.
I think the Dole bill, as introduced, comes more toward a common
ground. And I hope--in fact, I am optimistic--that with some
refinements, we can get bipartisan support for the Dole package. I
admit that the Democratic leader's package has moved significantly from
past welfare reform efforts that we have seen here on the Senate floor
from the other side of the aisle. That is a constructive move in the
direction of real reform.
I have a few questions, if the Senator from Louisiana will just take
a few questions, about the bill that is on the floor. I know he was
very involved in drafting it.
I guess it is more of a concern that I have where I sort of see that
the bill falls a little short, and where we might be able to move again
in a more constructive way forward.
Let me start out with three basic areas. One is the exemptions to the
new Temporary Employment Assistance Program. The Temporary Employment
Assistance Program is a new program replacing the old AFDC program,
which is the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Program, which
generally is conceived as welfare, the cash grant to a mother, in most
cases, single moms with children. That program is eliminated under the
Democratic leader's bill and replaced with what is called the Temporary
Employment Assistance Program. But in the bill, there is provided a
whole laundry list of exemptions to the time limit on that program.
I guess I have a problem that the exemptions are so broad that it
looks, to me, that there are very few people who would actually be
limited in time, under this program, to the 5 years. And let me just
read through some of the major exemptions.
No. 1 is an exemption for high unemployed areas. High unemployed
areas in the bill is defined as an area that has an unemployment rate
of 7.5 percent or higher. I believe just about----
Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator yield?
It is 8 percent.
Mr. SANTORUM. OK.
Mr. BREAUX. We changed the date.
Mr. SANTORUM. That is under the revised legislation. I know even at 8
percent, because I have seen figures, most major communities, at least
in 1994, would not have met that criteria, and would have been over the
8 percent. So no recipient in that city, for the period of 1994,
anyway--and my staff is now looking to see how far back that goes--no
person who lived in the city of New York, for example, would have had
any of that time they spent on welfare count toward that 5-year limit.
I know there are many cities that have had unemployment rates of over
8 percent far back for many years, and none of the people would be
considered as time limited.
Many of them would----
Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. SANTORUM. I see that as a problem.
Mr. BREAUX. I think the discussion is good. What our Work First bill
says is we require people to go to work. We know that if you live in a
high unemployment area--we pick 8 percent because that is the same
number that applies in the food stamp program. That is why we adjusted
it to 8 percent. But we do not think it makes any sense to push a young
mother out into the street if there are no jobs available in that area.
These people, however, would operate under the same rules as everybody
else. They are expected to engage in job search. And if, after 2 years,
even in this high unemployment area, they are not working, they are
then expected to perform workfare, community service in return for
their welfare benefits.
So when we are saying there are some areas where there are not any
jobs available, these people still have to engage in job search. And
then, after 2 years, if they are unable to find a job, they have to
perform community service or engage in workfare in their local
community. They still have to do something, in other words, to get the
benefits.
Mr. SANTORUM. Would that be part of what we would consider your--I
guess it is called the Work First employment block grant? Would that be
under the Work First employment block grant, after the 2-year
transition in that program?
I am just trying to understand.
Mr. BREAUX. It is a legitimate question.
The short answer is yes, it is a requirement that after the 2 years,
they have to engage in community service, workfare programs, located in
that community.
In other words, what we are saying is there is no free lunch. They
are not going to be able to continue receiving benefits for not working
if they are capable of working.
Mr. SANTORUM. Even if they are in a high unemployment area--I am
going through the other exceptions here--even if their children are
living with other than a parent; even if you have a child who is ill or
incapacitated, irrespective of all of these exemptions, after 2 years,
you have to go into some sort of community work program?
Mr. BREAUX. I would say this is one of the areas that perhaps we
agree on, State flexibility, because the State would have the
flexibility to make that determination on what best fits the people in
their State, would have the flexibility to determine the conditions and
the time restraints that would be effective in their particular States.
Some States may be different than others.
Mr. SANTORUM. Does that apply just to those exemptions or the high
unemployment exemption also, so if the State of New York, for example,
did not want the people to go to work in New York City? Or is that an
automatic? Is there no State flexibility there?
Mr. BREAUX. The point I make in response is that in the high
unemployment areas, the 8 percent or above, they have to go to work. I
mean, that is a requirement. They would have to engage in workfare or
community service or whatever.
Mr. SANTORUM. Now, my understanding is also that one of the
limitations on this workfare program is that after 2 years, you then go
into the Work First employment block grant program, which requires you
to perform--is it 20 hours, is that correct, 20 hours of some sort of
work?
Mr. BREAUX. Twenty hours. It actually goes into effect not after 2
years; it goes into effect after 6 months. So that is a requirement
that starts from the very beginning of the program after 6 months, not
after 2 years. The community service, the 20 hours of community work or
workfare in their local community, is something that is kicked in very
early in the program, not after 2 years, but after 6 months.
Mr. SANTORUM. I guess then my question is, let us say you have
someone who is a single mom with a couple of children, and she is on
the program for 2 years and has been in job search and doing things
that are required under the temporary employment assistance part. She
hits her 2-year limit and then is required, to continue on with those
benefits, to work.
Now, my understanding from the participation requirements is that 30
percent of your caseload would be in that situation, is that correct,
in the year 1996? So you are talking about 30 percent would be in this
transition program, temporary program, and then would eventually get
into the block granted work program? Is that your understanding?
Mr. BREAUX. I am not sure I understand the direction the question is
leading to in the sense that----
Mr. SANTORUM. My understanding is you have participation rates. We
have participation rates in our bill and you have participation rates
in your bill.
Mr. BREAUX. If I can respond to the Senator, I think the Senator may
be misreading the amendment that is pending with regard to
participation.
Mr. SANTORUM. Now I ask maybe a broader question.
How many people who go into the welfare program have to participate
in

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this new program as designed by the leader's amendment? What is the
participation--I know what it is in our bill. We eventually get up to
50 percent, but we do not have exemptions.
Mr. BREAUX. I think the Senator will find what we are trying to do in
both our bill and his is similar in that regard. We are talking about
participation rates. We are talking about really work rates, not
participating in a program.
We feel we have enough programs out there. We are not judging the
success of our bill on people participating in programs, but on
participation in actual work. We go from 20 percent up to 50 percent in
actual work, in jobs, in earning their benefits that they are
receiving--not participation in the sense of participating in a job
training program, but actually require working; they move from 20
percent up to 50 percent in a work program, actually working.
Mr. SANTORUM. So, again--and my analysis here may be a little dated
because I know you have revised your bill and I may not have the
current analysis. That is why I am trying to understand.
So those who are required to work, in 1996, at least according to our
30 percent of the State caseload, would have to be working in 1996?
(Mr. THOMAS assumed the chair.)
Mr. BREAUX. That is correct. That is working; not in a program,
actually working.
Mr. SANTORUM. That goes up to 50 percent by the year 2000.
Mr. BREAUX. That is correct.
Mr. SANTORUM. And it is up to the State to determine who those people
are that should be working or should not, which 50 percent. It is a
State flexibility issue?
Mr. BREAUX. Very similar to the Republican proposal.
Mr. SANTORUM. That is the point I was trying to make. On this issue,
it seems like there is some agreement that 50 percent is a fair figure
and allows for some State flexibility in considering the fact that
roughly a third of the parents who are on the current AFDC caseload are
disabled in one way or another. They have a disability or their
children are disabled or there is some problem where they would not be
a good candidate for work and, therefore, would not be required under
the bill to have a work requirement. We allow the States the
flexibility to determine that.
Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator yield at that point?
Mr. SANTORUM. Yes.
Mr. BREAUX. We allow the States flexibility because we believe,
again, in maximum flexibility, but we have exemptions that are
exemptions with which I think most people would agree. You are talking
about people who are ill, incapacitated, someone with a child under 12
months old. There are certain exemptions we feel should be there and
spell those out, but we still have the work requirements from 30 to 50
percent. That is locked in with some exemptions.
Mr. SANTORUM. Let me understand this. Maybe we are a little more
different than I thought we were. What you are saying is you take the
entire caseload of people that are on welfare, and you say a certain
number of them are ineligible because of an incapacity. I think that is
the term the current welfare law uses, ``incapacitation.'' We figure
that that number is roughly a third. So you take them out of the mix
before you apply the 50 percent standard?
Mr. BREAUX. Well, it is 20 percent. That is correct. It would start
from 20 percent up to 50 percent.
Mr. SANTORUM. Thirty. I think it is 30 in 1996, up to 50 percent in
the year 2000, just according to the numbers I have here.
Mr. BREAUX. On the work rates; the Senator is correct on the work
rates.
Mr. SANTORUM. Right. So what you basically take is, let us say, 65
percent of the people who come into the program, and then by the year
2000, half of the 65 percent must be in some sort of work program.
On the Republican side, we do not make that initial separation. What
we say is that 50 percent of the entire caseload, and it would be up to
the States' discretion, and I am sure they, in all likelihood, because
of the expense of someone who has an incapacity of some sort, would not
require them to work.
Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator yield on that point?
Mr. SANTORUM. I yield.
Mr. BREAUX. Does not the Republican bill have an exemption for moms
with children under 1 year old?
Mr. SANTORUM. That would be the one exemption, but there is no
exemption for someone who has a disability or something like that.
Mr. BREAUX. Will you disagree with that being a viable exemption?
Mr. SANTORUM. My feeling is we should allow the States complete
flexibility to deal with this issue instead of the overall goal of what
percentage of the entire caseload should be in work. I think 50 percent
is fair of the entire caseload, given the fact that we know a
substantial number cannot work. It is usually around a third. That is
what we found. We are even giving more of a fudge factor of another 15
percent or more of people who can work, but we are not going to require
them to work or the State required to put them to work.
Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator yield? Apparently you made some
decisions that exemptions from the national level are acceptable.
Mr. SANTORUM. I said that would not be my preference. My preference
would be to have no exemptions at the Federal level. We allow the
States the ultimate flexibility to determine who is going to work and
who is not, given the standard of half, which is a fairly generous
standard where usually only around a third has a disability problem
that would make them ineligible for work.
We do allow, I think, a fair amount of flexibility. I just want to
understand the difference, and the difference is that you would require
half of two-thirds to work. We would require half of the entire
caseload.
Mr. BREAUX. I respond to the Senator by saying under our bill, we are
even tougher on those who are capable of working, because we are
requiring by the year 2000, 50 percent are required to work. That is 50
percent of those eligible.
The Senator from Pennsylvania is saying his 50 percent is looking at
the whole broad range, a larger group saying 50 percent of them. We are
saying that when you find the people who are able to work, let us make
sure you get them to work. I think we are even tighter than you are on
that particular point.
Mr. SANTORUM. I do not know how you can be tighter if you have a
million people--let us assume we have a million people in the welfare
system in Pennsylvania, which is high, but let us say we have a million
people, and we say 50 percent of those people have to go to work. That
is 500,000 people.
Under your standard, we say 667,000 are technically under your new
program because the other 333,000 are ineligible right from the start,
and if you take half of 667,000, you are now down to 333,000, not
500,000. So we are going to have, in the case of a million, we are
going to have 120,000-some more people working, required to work than
under your bill.
Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to.
Mr. BREAUX. I think what we are establishing by our conversation, and
I think it is helpful in understanding the two approaches, is that we
both have requirements of people who are now on welfare to go into the
work force. Even the percentages, I think, are ultimately the same: 50
percent by a date certain.
We both have exemptions as to who should not be forced to work. Ours
are more broad. We have people who are incapacitated, mothers with
children under 1 year old. You have fewer exemptions.
I think the key point that needs to be made here is that we require
these people to be put to work, and we are going to help the States
fund the programs that put them to work. The concern that I and other
Democrats have about the Republican proposal is that it is an unfunded
mandate in the sense you are telling the States they have to meet these
goals, but not providing them any financial assistance in order to meet
it. That is a bigger question, and I think is a legitimate question for
discussion: How are the States going to meet these goals with less help
than they are getting now?
Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to answer that question. I would really

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defer to the Governors of the States that have come to us and have been
very strongly in support of what we have been putting forward. How they
are going to do it is, we are going to release them from all the
Federal strings attached to the current program.
What Governors will tell you is they can run a much more efficient
program than we can out of Washington through the States. I happen to
believe--I had a conversation just this past week with my Governor from
Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge, a former Member of the House, who feels very
strongly if given the opportunity to design their own program, given
the existing amount of AFDC dollars coming through, existing amount of
what was the Jobs Program coming through, which is what is in the
Republican bill, they cannot only design a better program, put more
people to work, get more people off the rolls, get people back into
productive work in Pennsylvania at less money, that without the hoops
they have to jump through here at the Federal level--I know the Senator
from Oregon put up a chart earlier today about all the things you have
to do to process someone through the system--we now provide that
flexibility for them to be able to design their own system, which we
hope and I believe will be a lot more efficient.
It is a good question. It is one I think most Governors would say
they would like the responsibility, the opportunity to design a program
based on. I know the Senator from Iowa was up here just within the last
couple of hours talking about what they have done in Iowa and the fact
they have cut caseload, they have cut the amount of money in the
program. Why? Because they got a waiver to allow them to run their own
program. So we have seen, even with the limited waivers that have been
allowed already, programs that have spent less money, that have put
more people to work and have been better for the taxpayers and people
in the system. I think we have seen a history that we can do this if
the States are given the opportunity to design a program.
Mr. BREAUX. If the Senator will yield on that point, Governor
Thompson, who I think has done a good job of trying to reform welfare
in Wisconsin, when he testified before the Finance Committee, made the
point very clearly that some States are able to do some of these things
because they have the financial wherewithal to do it. But there are an
awful lot of States, when they face a 50-percent requirement of putting
people to work with less money coming from the Federal Government, they
are simply not going to be able to do it.
That is why the concept of a partnership, where the Federal
Government puts up a certain amount and the States put up a certain
amount, a requirement that the States participate financially, is so
important.
I think the discussion is good. I think there are some areas for us
to meet in the middle. When I talk about a compromise, I am talking
about not just agreeing with the Dole bill. A compromise is your side
moving a little over to the middle of this aisle and our side moving
toward the middle on some of these things--we have some common goals
and we are close, I think--in order to reach an agreement that the
President can sign and that will ultimately be reform. I hope to
continue to work with the Senator from Pennsylvania to reach that goal.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Does the Senator from Pennsylvania yield the floor?
Mr. SANTORUM. I yield the floor.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. While the Senator from Louisiana is here, I want to say
I very much appreciated this exchange. It made me feel like we are back
in 1988.
There are two things to say. One is that there is a participation
requirement in existing law of 20 percent. It was put in the law in
1988--to be phased in to 20 percent--with the clear expectation that as
the program took hold, the jobs program, it would move forward. In a
bill before the Finance Committee--which the administration has
abandoned, and I grant that--we moved that rate from 20 percent, as
anticipated, on schedule just about, to 35 percent in 1998, to 40
percent in 1999, to 45 and then 50 percent in the year 2001.
What we lose in so much of what is on the floor right now is the
specific Federal funding to do this. Governors and mayors will look up
in despair in 5 years.
I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, there will be on the desk very
shortly now the estimates for the proportion of children on AFDC,
welfare, in 1993. These are estimated, but they are fairly accurate. In
Philadelphia, at any point in time, 44 percent of the children are on
AFDC. In the course of a year, 57 percent are.
Now, those numbers overwhelm the system. Thirty years ago, when it
would have been 10 percent at one time and 13 over a time, you could
say, all right, Philadelphia, PA, you take care of this problem. I have
watched it come that these numbers overwhelm the city. These problems
are so much deeper.
On last Saturday in Baltimore--the Senator from Connecticut will be
interested in this--there was a kind of public celebration as they blew
up the Lafayette Public Housing Complex in downtown Baltimore. It
happened in Newark a year ago. It first appeared in St. Louis, where
the Pruitt-Igoe Houses were blown up in 1972. In the city of Baltimore,
it was announced, and the mayor had the plunger, and they had T-shirts,
and they made the most of it. They described the housing as
``warehousing the poor.'' When it was built, it was a model complex. It
got awards everywhere. What a nice way to live, right downtown, and I
think they could see the harbor. They are going to replace them now
with townhouses. Eighty-five percent of the persons in the townhouses
will be on AFDC. Each will have a case manager from the Johns Hopkins
School of Social Work. They will be very carefully attended to and all
these things. There will be townhouse case managers. How many
townhouses? There will be 317.
Those are the realities. How many hundreds of thousands of children
in Baltimore will be eligible? I plead to a Senate that does not hear
me on this. These numbers of people receiving welfare benefits are
beyond the capacity of the States and local government. Cutting off the
Federal commitment that we have had for 60 years is an action bordering
on mindlessness. And I make the case with no very great expectation of
persuading anyone.
Thank you, Mr. President. I thank my friend from Pennsylvania. This
morning, the Senator from Oregon and I were going over these numbers.
If Philadelphia is 57, Detroit is 67. New York, which is larger, is 39.
Mr. SANTORUM. If the Senator will yield----
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I yield the floor.
Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from New York that
I think he makes a strong point that work programs are expensive to
administer. They are very expensive to administer.
I chaired the Republican task force last year in the House as a
member of the Ways and Means Committee that drafted a bill that was
different from the bill that passed the House, but it provided a
substantial amount more money for work programs. In fact, I think over
the 5-year period in the bill that I, in a sense, authored, we spent
$12 billion more, understanding the expense of doing so. So I have some
sympathy with what the Senator is saying as to the problems States are
going to confront.
I am telling you, from the perspective of governors who I have talked
to, they feel comfortable that if we removed all of the restrictions,
which in a sense in the Republican bill we do--there are some, but very
minimal--if we remove the restrictions in place, they believe they can
get sufficient savings to be able to run a work program in addition to
the current AFDC program. I am hopeful that they can. I have my own
skepticism. I hope they can. Given the budgetary realities, I think
that is going to be something we are going to challenge the Governors
to do.
If we did nothing with the AFDC program--that program is not doubling
every couple of years or so. This is not a program projected to
dramatically increase, and it is not that we are not keeping up with
the skyrocketing costs. I do not have the numbers in front of me--and
correct me if you have them--but my understanding is that I think, in
the next 7 years, AFDC was to go from $16 billion to maybe $18 billion,
something like that--maybe $19

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billion. It is an increase, but it is not like the numbers on AFDC are
growing like we have seen on SSI and some other programs. In fact, we
are seeing a lot of people on AFDC moving over to the SSI.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Which is 100 percent Federal money.
Mr. SANTORUM. And more, because the benefits are more generous. I
suspect we will see more people moving from the AFDC rolls, in an
attempt to claim some sort of disability to get into the SSI.
I suggest that given the fact that this program is not rapidly
increasing in many States--maybe New York and Pennsylvania being two of
them--we will see a leveling off and maybe even a decline where we have
in those States an opportunity to get work into these programs and get
significant cost savings. And we have provided in this bill a growth
factor of $1.5 billion, I think, over the next 7 years for the higher
growth States to tap into more money to be able to deal with the
increases in AFDC population. So we have not completely turned our
backs to the possibility of growth.
We hope that with the combination of the Governors being able to
redesign programs with some limited additional assistance from the
Federal Government, we can handle those States that are having growth
problems in AFDC.
Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. SANTORUM. Yes.
Mr. BREAUX. Here is my problem with the Republican proposal. We both
have the requirement that States put 50 percent of the welfare
recipients into work by the year 2000. We are the same on that
essential provision. But the difference is that your proposal does not
provide the States with the funding to do that.
Here is my concern. It is that if they do not have the funding to do
that, they are not going to be able to meet that target. Your response
to that, as I understand it, is that we are going to eliminate the
redtape we now have imposed upon the States.
Now, my question is, what type of redtape are we going to be
eliminating that would give the States the extra funding that they need
in order to put 50 percent of the recipients to work?
What type of redtape elimination is going to add up to those type of
dollars in order to meet the 50 percent requirement that we both agree
is an appropriate target?
Mr. SANTORUM. Obviously, they can redesign the entire program. They
can redesign eligibility criteria. They can do a whole host of things
that put requirements in that we do not have now.
For example, you mentioned the work requirement. Several States have
put in an immediate work requirement. I think it is Wisconsin that did,
and we saw the number of people on welfare drop, by some enormous
number like 20 or 30 percent, like that because people did not want to
sign up and work.
I think we will see, and I think Governors believe if you make
welfare into a system that is a dynamic system where people are going
to have their lives changed, turned around, back out, it is sort of--I
think of the Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy got to the Wizard of Oz, before
they saw the wizard, they went in and the scarecrow got stuffed full of
hay and the tin man got all shined up.
If you see this as this program where you come in and try to change
peoples lives as a dynamic process, in a shorter scope as opposed to
one that is more of a long-term maintenance kind of system, you will
see people opting out in some cases, so we have lower caseloads.
We have seen that happen in States that put those kind of
requirements in place, and we will see people on for less periods of
time, because if the system works well--I remember debating this in the
House--if the system works well, people will not end up in the welfare
system, because if it works well, we will get them ready for jobs and
get them back into job placements.
That, to me, is what we have to sort of change--the entire psychology
of what is going on here. I think what we have done is give States the
flexibility to do that in a way that we have seen in other experiments
works very, very effectively.
Mr. BREAUX. If the Senator will yield for a comment, I appreciate the
Wizard of Oz analysis. I am afraid it is more like an Alice in
Wonderland approach.
Mr. SANTORUM. I have small children.
Mr. BREAUX. Hopefully, we will see the merits of each other's
approach before the day is over and reach an accommodation that does
get the job done.
Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to yield the floor.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from
Pennsylvania.
I was enjoying and benefiting from the thoughtful colloquy between
the Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from Louisiana, and, of
course, as always, benefiting from the thoughtful comments of the
Senator from New York.
I will say two things about what I just heard. One is that it is from
this kind of thoughtful colloquy that, hopefully, a bill will emerge
that has a strong bipartisan base of support. We will see whether that
happens.
Second, I say to my friend from New York who raised the question a
moment ago of whether anybody is listening, I am listening. I have
always found the Senator from New York to be right on target on these
matters. Sometimes the role of the prophet is not to have the masses
behind him, but if you speak the truth, ultimately they will come to
you. I think that is where we are today.
Mr. President, I rise to support the substitute that is now pending
offered by Senator Daschle, Senator Breaux, Senator Mikulski and many
others. I am privileged to be a cosponsor of the so-called Work First
plan, which really represents a genuine attempt at welfare reform.
Mr. President, before I speak about this pending substitute, I do
want to say a few words about the colloquy that we have just heard and
the comments of the Senator from New York.
This is a real test for this Chamber, for the body politic, as to
whether we can do what is right and what is reasonable on the question
of welfare. I have yet to find, and I will be glad to present an award
to, anybody who can present to me an elected official who will support
the status quo regarding welfare in America today. No one does.
Everyone is for reform of one kind or another. The question is what
kind will it be.
Do we have the capacity to break out of the business of competing
images, even our own perspectives--sometimes accurate, sometimes
skewed--on what is causing this dreadful problem not just of poverty
but of the underlying problem of babies being born in increasing
numbers to mothers who are not married, and who do not have fathers?
That is the main way people get on welfare, because it is aid for
dependent children. One of the most frequent ways that one qualifies
for welfare, is when one is born in a situation where one's parents
cannot support them. Over and over again in the millions--not the
thousands, but the millions--there are children being born to parents
unmarried and therefore needing welfare.
These are central challenges, not just to our capacity to be
reasonable and to break through the competing images and politics and
to do something thoughtful, to prove that Congress can legislate, break
through the politics, shake up the system, make it work, make it
reflect the values of the American people as the American people are so
convinced it does not now--that is, the welfare system does not now
reflect their best values.
Mr. President, this is a welfare program that started with such good
intentions in the 1930's and now is disparaged by those who benefit
from it and by those who pay for it. It is a program that has grown
very, very large--billions and billions of dollars every year.
Part of what is at work here is our ability to prove as elected
representatives of the people of this country that we are capable of
changing the status quo if they are not happy with it. A problem that
took 60 years to get into will not be solved in 6 days or maybe not
even in 6 years. The effort did begin with the Family Support Act,
which I consider to be an act of genuine welfare reform. I believe that
the Daschle substitute which is before the Senate continues that work.
To me, with the prevailing mood in this country of questioning the
credibility, the legitimacy, the effectiveness

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of Government to step out and deal with real problems, part of the test
that we are facing in this welfare reform debate is a more general one,
which is, are we capable of truly dealing with this program that has
gone off the course, bringing it back to be cost effective, to be
helpful to people who are beneficiaries of the program, and to better
reflect our values?
Let me deal with that second point. Part of the great public anger
about welfare is the perception, too often accurate, that it does not
reflect the best of American values. When programs of our Government,
particularly ones as central and large as this one, do not reflect the
values of the American people, we lose their support. It is as simple
as that.
What is a great basic American value? We speak about it so much it
loses its meaning. It is work. It is work in the broader sense, in the
sense that this is an impulse that drove so many of our parents and
grandparents and great grandparents before them to come to this
country. Not just, of course, the dream of political freedom which
impelled millions of Americans--millions--to emigrate to America, but
the dream of economic opportunity, the understanding of people who came
from feudal, oligarchic, unfair economic systems where they had no
opportunity that America was the country where, if you worked hard,
there was nothing you could not achieve.
The welfare system seems to have turned this on its head, motivated by
good intentions, charitable intentions at the outset, and created a
system that does not encourage work, that seems at times to reward the
opposite, and that offends the great majority of people who are out
there, working hard, who, too often in the last decade or two, do not
see their standard of living going up but do see themselves paying
large tax bills and believe in their minds, understandably, that a lot
of that money they worked hard for goes to people who are not working
as hard, not reflecting the values of work in this country.

Family, in this society and other societies, the core unit, the
basic, primal sense of responsibility, the kind of natural division of
familial labor between man and woman, mother and father, is destroyed
in our society in numbers, as the Senator from New York has pointed
out, that we do not find--I have heard him say this--in other
societies. Increasing numbers, more than a third of the babies, as I
said before, are born in this country every year with no family, a
mother living alone without a father, a desperate situation causing all
sorts of problems for our society including contributing greatly to the
problem of crime and violent crime.
But the point I make here, as I speak about values, is that of the
basic value of parents caring for their children. Let me focus on the
fathers, whose absence is the cause of so many millions of mothers
having to go on welfare, fathers not accepting and carrying out what we
would think would be the most fundamental, uncomplicated, natural sense
of obligation: to take care of their children.
So, this program, as it exists, offends some basic American values.
It challenges us to bring the program into line with those values, to
gather more support, to open the way for the American people to return
to their basic nature, which is to be charitable, which is naturally to
want to help people who cannot help themselves. But the majority of
American people, I am afraid, feel that welfare, as it exists now,
takes advantage of their good natures. I think part of the challenge
that we have is to break through and reform this program, genuinely
reform it so it reflects the values held by most Americans and once
again liberates their better natures to care for those who cannot care
for themselves.
I will make one final point in this opening, general part of my
statement, Mr. President, which is this. The Senator from New York
touched on this as he talked about the extraordinary percentages of
children in various of our cities who are at one time or another on
welfare, AFDC: 47 percent, 67 percent. These are astounding numbers,
but they bring me to make this point.
I want to urge my colleagues here to go forward with a certain sense
of humility and caution, understanding that as we reform welfare we are
not dealing here with widgets. We are not dealing here with constructs
of wood and metal and paper. We are dealing here with people, and
particularly with millions of children--if I may say so, millions of
God's children--whose fate it was, through no act of their own, to be
born poor, to be born, in the majority of cases, with only one parent
accepting any responsibility for them.
So, as we go forward, understandably in the direction of reform, I
hope we will remember that it is these children who are going to be
affected and that they are innocents. Let us innovate, let us demand,
let us come down hard on those whose misbehavior is the cause of this
system that in so many ways has failed. But let us not punish the
children. And let us not leave the streets of our cities and towns full
of children for whom no one will take responsibility. We do not want a
country like that.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the Senator yield for just a question?
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Certainly I will.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I know he would be aware, he is speaking so well, so
feelingly and wisely, that in 1992 the number of children born to
unmarried women was 1,224,876 souls, one and a quarter million children
in 1 year.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. I say to the Senator, the numbers are overpowering. Of
course, remember, as we think of the accumulated welfare rolls, we are
talking about those children, in a sense, times 18--it comes out to a
little bit less--but until they reach the age of majority. That tells
us two things. One is the extraordinary number of children involved
here. And second, the extraordinary cost of the program. I saw a number
about a year or two ago that said in any given year we spent $34
billion on children born out of wedlock. That is an amazing number, $34
billion. That is the accumulation of funding to support children from
birth to 18.
So this program needs reform, but let us do it with a sense of
humility and understanding about the human impact of what is happening
here.
Mr. President, let me come now to the so-called Work First plan,
introduced by Senator Daschle and many others of us. I think this is
real reform that would improve the lives of welfare beneficiaries,
break the cycle of dependency, better serve the taxpayers of this
country, and better reflect the values of the American people. The
primary welfare program in this country, AFDC, is failing in what ought
to be its most important task--moving welfare beneficiaries into the
work force. We have seen some improvement as a result of the jobs
program coming off of the Family Support Act. This Work First plan
continues that improvement by changing the strategy and devoting the
resources for moving real people into real jobs.
This proposal would also give welfare beneficiaries some genuine
incentives to break the cycle of poverty, give them the same incentives
that we have associated with characteristic American values instead of
trapping them, enslaving them in dependency by discontinuing current
programs that reward single parents who do not work, do not marry, and
have children out of wedlock.
These are steps that many of us on this side are united in taking
because the existing system really does contradict our most cherished
values and contributes to society's most serious problems. The Work
First plan actually replaces the AFDC program, so welfare as we have
known it will not exist if the Daschle substitute is adopted. It
replaces AFDC with a Temporary Employment Assistance Program that is
focused on putting people to work. It gives States the flexibility and
the incentives they need to successfully move people into the private
sector for jobs.
It also addresses two of the key causes of welfare dependency that I
have spoken about. Through child support enforcement it finally forces
deadbeat dads to assume at least their financial responsibility, and it
starts a major national campaign to reduce out-of-wedlock births,
particularly to teenagers.
Mr. President, others have said it but I will say it again, and it is
very important to say. While preserving the kind of guarantee that
those who are genuinely poor and unable to work will receive some
benefits, the minimum assistance consistent with what I have described
as America's best charitable

[[Page S 12699]]
nature, the Work First substitute ends unconditional welfare benefits.
Each person receiving assistance will have to sign an individualized
personal empowerment contract. This is something new that has come up
from the States.
As the Senator from Iowa indicated earlier, if the recipients do not
comply with the contract--in other words, you do not just get the
benefit but you have to promise in a signed contract to do some things
in return, including, of course, looking for work from day one on
welfare--then the beneficiaries will lose some, and ultimately could
lose all of their benefits if they do not comply with their end of the
bargain--mutual responsibility.
While the contract may include some training for education, the
emphasis is going to be on work experience. All recipients will be
required to search for a job from day one. Eligibility for benefits is
going to be limited to 5 years, although children whose parents reach
this time limit will still be eligible for vouchers to enable them to
receive basic sustenance. This I think reflects the principle, the
value, that I described earlier, which is that these are kids. These
are innocent kids. Let us not punish them more than they deserve while
we are trying to solve this problem, and unintentionally create a
greater problem for our society.
States under this Daschle substitute must focus this program directly
on placing people in private sector jobs. As has been discussed in a
colloquy between the Senators from Louisiana and Pennsylvania, the bill
requires States to have at least 50 percent of their caseload working
by the year 2001. It moves away from telling States how to succeed and
instead rewards results. States that have high private sector job
placement rates will receive a financial bonus.
Mr. President, the work requirements in this bill are tough, and just
as important, they are funded. We understand that child care assistance
is the critical link between welfare and work. Unlike the alternative
proposal, this substitute gives States the child care funding they need
to put people in jobs and move them off welfare.
Mr. President, I noted a discussion among my colleagues a short time
ago about the importance of trying to achieve a bipartisan result. I
could not agree more. I recall the Senator from New York indicated the
overwhelming bipartisan support for the Family Support Act of 1988.
As you look at these bills, as I have, there is a lot that holds them
together. There is a lot in common. I hope we can build on that common
base in the next week as we move toward passing legislation. In some
ways, it has actually been quite gratifying to watch the bills change,
and in this sense, watch Senator Dole's bill as it has evolved. The
first major change, as I see it, was related to the so-called
participation requirements in the original version of Senator Dole's
bill. These requirements for the States did not require the States to
move beneficiaries into jobs, as I read the original proposal. That has
now changed. And work standards very much like those included in the
Daschle substitute are now included in the Dole bill. And there, I
hope, is one common basis from which we can build.
Mr. President, the Daschle substitute also tackles the critical
problem of teen pregnancy. Unmarried teen parents are particularly
likely to fall into long-term welfare dependency. More than one-half of
welfare spending goes to women who first gave birth as teens.
This legislation, among other things, requires teen mothers to live
at home and helps communities establish supervised group homes for
single teen mothers; that is, second-chance homes.
Mr. President, within the last couple of years, I have been so
perplexed by this problem of babies being born to unmarried mothers. I
have spent some time visiting programs in Connecticut, visiting with
teens, trying to understand how this has happened, how these numbers
have skyrocketed as they have. I do not have any conclusive answer. But
one thing I found in some of my conversations with young women who have
had babies while they were teenagers is when you ask them, ``Why? Why
did you do it,'' it is very interesting. Almost every time I have had
this conversation, the mothers will say, ``I love my baby, but I wish I
had waited.'' Of course, in that, they are acknowledging that it is not
only the child born to the unwed mother in poverty that suffers. It is
the mother, whose dreams are severely restricted as a result of
suddenly having a child to care for.
But once you get beyond that, and they say they wish they had waited,
and you ask why this happened, some just give the obvious answer. ``I
did not use birth control.'' I found others saying that they did it
intentionally. They had the child because they wanted to get out of
their homes. They wanted to be independent. And they knew that if they
had a baby, they could receive welfare payments and that would be the
basis for establishing their independent residency. Obviously, that is
a sad and sorry commentary--I shall leave it at that--as a motivation
for bringing a child into the world.
But this Daschle substitute gets to that problem by removing that
motivation, by requiring teenaged mothers to live at home or live in
the supervised group homes, if their home is not a suitable
environment, and by requiring teenaged mothers to remain in school or
in a training program, all as a condition of receiving welfare
benefits. No longer will there be a blank check regardless of the
behavior of the recipient. Instead, we will demand mutual
responsibility. Society will try to take care of your child. We will
try to help you out of dependency, but only if you make the effort
yourself.
Finally, Mr. President, this Daschle substitute incorporates very
strong child support enforcement legislation which Senator Bradley and
others introduced earlier this year. I was privileged to be a cosponsor
of it. I was attorney general of the State of Connecticut, before I was
honored to be elected by the people of my State to serve in this body.
One of my responsibilities was enforcing child support orders. I was
startled, as I went through the files--thousands of them--to see the
degree to which men who had fathered children refused to accept fiscal
responsibility, financial responsibility for those children, and found
100 different ways to try to avoid or make excuses for not doing so.
The legislation that is part of the Daschle substitute will make it
easier for States to locate absent noncustodial parents; that is,
parents not having custody of the children, almost always the fathers.
It will also make it easier for States to establish paternity. Science
has been a great help here in facilitating the establishment of
paternity through blood tests, and also establishing a court order and
enforcement of court orders. The tough child support enforcement system
will help keep millions of children out of poverty and off welfare. It
is a simple statement. It is as simple as the fact that when babies are
born to unwed mothers, they are much more likely to end up on welfare.
But the fact is that if fathers took care of the children, society
would not have to do so and the welfare rolls would go down.
Of course, these tough child support enforcement laws will send a
message of responsibility to would-be deadbeat parents, deadbeat dads.
In an era of skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births and rising teen
pregnancy rates, child support payments must become a clearly
understood, highly visible, and unavoidable fact of life for absent
parents. In other words, these absent parents must live in fear of
their local prosecuting attorney or attorneys general coming after them
to make sure that any money they earn will go in a substantial degree
to supporting the children they have fathered.
Mr. President, I will have an amendment that I will introduce later
in the proceedings that expands the effort to deal with teen pregnancy,
building on some work done by Kathleen Sylvester of the Progressive
Policy Institute
establishing a highly visible national campaign to cut the rate of
teenage births, setting goals for States, giving them some money to
innovate with programs to cut the rate of teen pregnancies, and
rewarding them as we do with regard to placement of people in private-
sector jobs when they achieve a reduction in teen pregnancies.

One of the dreadful facts that comes out as we go over this problem
of teen pregnancies is that a remarkable percentage of the babies born
to teenage mothers have been fathered by men

[[Page S 12700]]
who are considerably older. So the vision that we may have of two
reckless teenagers casually creating a baby is not the norm. As I
understand it; it is men who are typically older than these teenaged
girls who, in a setting that is often abusive, exploitive, or
overpowering, are fathering these children in acts that from a legal
point of view are pure and simple statutory rape.
And there is not much we can do from Washington to deal with that
except to--and my amendment will have some element to it that will--try
to encourage the States, the local prosecuting attorneys, the district
attorneys to be very aggressive in working with the welfare authorities
to once again take statutory rape as a serious crime and to prosecute
it, understanding that this is done to deter adult men from committing
a sexual act that will result in a child born to poverty, who to a
devastating degree is likely to end up a part of the criminal problem
in society.
So I hope we can begin to take from these statistics of the ages of
the men who are fathering too many of the children born to teenaged
mothers, some attempt to build a genuine national effort among
prosecuting attorneys to look at the seriousness of a crime that in an
age of permissiveness has been winked at, which is statutory rape.
In conclusion, Mr. President, I think this Daschle substitute, the
Work First plan, is true welfare reform. It does demand responsibility
from parents while providing continued protection for children, and it
does address the two key causes of welfare dependency--teen pregnancy
and unpaid child support. It does reflect the values of the American
people. And it does take on the welfare status quo, building on the
work of the Family Support Act, and really does amount to genuine
welfare reform. I understand that over the next week we will hear
conflicting views on this subject. But I can only echo the sentiments
expressed earlier in this Chamber, let us cut through the politics, let
us get to the heart of the problem. And let us see if we can, as
happened in 1988, resoundingly adopt a true welfare reform proposal. I
thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thompson). The Senator from New York.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his
extraordinary, moving, judicious, serious comments. I know his capacity
for sometimes biblical patience, and I also know his capacity for
indignation when things have gone on for too long. We have been too
long on the subject.
In 1971, a Republican President, President Nixon, had proposed a
guaranteed income as a substitute for this subject. It was H.R. 1 in
the House of Representatives. And it happened that on February 8, 1971,
all three of the then major news magazines--and still those--had the
subject of welfare on their covers. News Week on its cover had welfare.
``WELFARE: There Must Be a Better Way,'' it said of the President's
program, ``It will constitute a humanitarian achievement unrivaled
since the New Deal.'' It was not humanitarian enough for Democrats; too
humanitarian for some Republicans.
The cover story of Time was devoted to ``The Welfare Maze.'' It
began: ``The U.S. welfare system is a living nightmare that has reached
the point of the involuntary scream and chill awakening.'' That is how
Time began its issue.
The cover story of US News & World Report: ``Welfare Out of Control--
Story of Financial Crisis Cities Face.''
Now, in that year, sir, the illegitimacy ratio for the nation was
11.2 percent. It is now three times that, the number of children born
in that circumstance. Where we have 1,225,000 today, in 1971 it was
400,000. It is three times, almost, that ratio. The ratio has increased
by a factor of three, the number of children by a factor of three. That
is the central phenomenon.
I think the Progressive Policy Institute has been very helpful in
this regard. There is this phenomenon of statutory rape. As deviancy
gets redefined, we do not think much of that anymore. But it is still
law.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. That is right.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. What would the Senator hypothesize? Would the Senator
hypothesize that the households in which the children grow up no longer
have anyone who will defend them? ``You can't come in here. And you
will please go out there and close the door behind you.''
Lee Rainwater, a whole generation ago studying the public housing in
Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, wrote an essay on the feeling within a
household, ``Can you say no to someone who wants to come in?'' A
thought that perhaps would not occur to many persons here. Close your
door at night, and that is it. Close yours, and I close mine.
The French sociologist, Henri Bergson spoke at the turn of the
century of society becoming a dust of individuals--no ties. I think
this new data on ages of the fathers suggests that. I think you are
absolutely right; if anybody could mobilize the attorneys general, the
Senator from Connecticut could. I will certainly support that
amendment. I look forward to it. And I thank you for your comments. I
know the Senator from Pennsylvania would agree we are trying to reach
some understandings here. We have understandings. And where we have
different assessments, well, that is why we have the Senate.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. I very briefly want to thank the Senator from New York
for his kind words. He has made here what is to me a very important
point, a very stunning point, and I just want to repeat it if I may,
which is that there is a way in which the collapse of the family opens
the door, in the metaphor that the Senator has used, to the further
collapse of the family. And we are, of course, generalizing here. There
are many circumstances where this does not take place. But if you have
a situation where babies are born to unmarried women and there is no
father in the house, then as the baby, if it is a girl, grows up, will
the mother be able to alone protect the child from a man who may be a
predator? And I understand it is much more complicated in many cases
than that.
But there is a way in which nature has created this unit, and we all
have our roles to play in it. The single, poor mother may be ill-
equipped to alone defend her child, against a man whose intentions are
not good. The Senator is right, we do not enforce these statutory rape
laws anymore, but they are statutory. These acts are illegal, and they
are illegal for a good reason. The consequences are disastrous, and I
think if we can put some fear out there by more vigorously enforcing
these laws, we not only will be doing what is right, but we may
actually have an effect on the rate of out-of-wedlock births.
I thank the Senator from New York. I personally thank the Senator
from Pennsylvania, not only for the thoughtfulness of his earlier
comments, but for the kindness of yielding the floor to me. I went on a
bit longer than I expected to, but I appreciate very much his kindness
to me.
Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank my friend, the
Senator from Connecticut, for his thoughtful comments and for his kind
remarks about me. I look forward to working with him and others in,
again, trying to craft what I believe will be a bipartisan solution to
this problem. We may not get the resounding vote that we got in 1988 in
this Senate on this measure, but I think the measure that passes in the
Senate this year will be quite significantly more dramatic than what we
did in 1988. When you stretch the envelope, you leave more people
behind. There is, in a sense, less consensus.
I think it would be easy to craft something that is watered down that
could get everybody's vote here, but I do not think we would accomplish
what we set out to accomplish, which is truly reforming the welfare
system.
I am hopeful we can stretch the envelope, be bipartisan and really
help millions of Americans get out of poverty.
I rise to just finish up on some of the comments and discussion I was
having with the Senator from Louisiana. He asked, really, the question
that is asked probably most about the Republican proposal, which is how
are States going to be able to put people to work and run these work
programs and, at the same time, do that, which is very

[[Page S 12701]]
expensive, with a flat amount of funding, given that some States are
going to see increases in poverty population? I mentioned the fact
those States that do experience increases, we do have a pot of money
there that would help them.
What about just dealing with the increased cost of providing for a
work program? I cite an example of Riverside, CA. The Senator from New
York, on many occasions, has cited Riverside, CA, as an example of an
existing program that seems to be having some good results in a work-
related program, the GAIN program, and other Members on the floor have
done the same thing.
I just state for the Record that in Riverside, and I will add Grand
Rapids and Atlanta, those three programs combined, which have gone into
a program that is a work program that requires a substantial investment
of time and energy on the part of the welfare recipient, is this
dynamic program that I believe the States would go to under the
Republican proposal.
In those areas, what we have seen is a dramatic cost savings. So,
assuming that this could be replicated on a State level, we are seeing
flat funding, yes, but in these three communities that put this program
in place, this work requirement and other kinds of dynamic turnover off
the welfare roles back into productive society, there was a 22 percent
reduction in AFDC--22 percent reduction in AFDC. Not flat, not an
increase. They saved 22 percent in costs. Their caseload went down 16
percent overall. Food stamps went down 14 percent.
So to suggest that we have to pump in more dollars to accomplish this
purpose of putting people to work I do not think meets with the
numbers. And, by the way, Riverside, CA, had a 9 percent unemployment
rate at the time. So we have the exemption for anything over 8 percent
that you do not have to go to work, you do not have to go to work in
the temporary assistance program. You can do it.
I can tell you, I come from southwestern Pennsylvania. We have had
some very tough economic times and continue to have them. I can tell
you there are lots of people who say, ``Look, there are jobs out there,
you just have to go out and find them and be willing to work and go do
it. It proves the case that, No. 1, there are jobs out there and you
can save money in the process and run a better program that is being
lauded by both sides of the aisle.
So the numbers of what we have seen of what has been successful in
this country prove that you can run a program with less money, get
people off welfare into work even in high unemployment areas. I think
what we have seen is you have these programs that really do focus on
the individual, and they provide what the individual needs. That is not
a check the first of the month and, ``Thank you, ma'am,'' and out the
door, but it is care and concern and cooperation and an intensive
desire by the people in the system to see that person who walks through
that door who has had a tough run of luck in a problem situation get
that kind of assistance they need to turn themselves around.
I have another comment I want to make about the discussion I had with
the Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield just to make a
unanimous consent request for staff on the floor?
Mr. SANTORUM. I yield the floor.

Privilege of the Floor

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Debra Wirth,
a fellow in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor for the
duration of the welfare debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, what we talked about was the 8 percent
figure as any area of what I thought was a Bureau of Labor Statistics
area, which is a geographical area defined by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics as an area they will then determine the number of people,
the percentage of people in that area that are unemployed.
If those areas are above 8 percent, in the Democratic leader's bill,
those people who reside in those areas that have an unemployment rate
of over 8 percent, that time in which they live in those areas of high
unemployment does not count toward their 5-year limit. In fact, it can
be indefinite.
What I found out was that, yes, it was 7.5, they raised it to 8, but
they eliminated the requirement that they had to be a defined Bureau of
Labor Statistics area, that the State could now define what the area
would be. It could be an entire State. It could be a portion of the
Bureau of Labor Statistics area. It could be a neighborhood.
What it does is it makes this determination completely arbitrary on
the part of the State, potentially even indecipherable, because you
could have literally neighborhoods picked out or communities picked
out.
I think it is poor policy, but I think it creates a huge loophole in
this whole area of exemptions from the time limit on welfare, not a
step in the right direction. They gave with one hand and took away with
the other. They gave by increasing the unemployment rate from 7.5 to 8
percent, and then they said we will define where the area is, we will
not use the current Bureau of Labor Statistics area, we will let the
States determine what they mean. That really does take away any real
change in that policy.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for a moment?
Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Does not the Bureau of Labor Statistics--who does the
survey right now on unemployment, officially?
Mr. SANTORUM. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Mr. WELLSTONE. And the Senator is concerned they continue to do the
surveys? I do not quite understand the Senator's position.
Mr. SANTORUM. No, no. In the Democratic leader's bill, what they have
done with their most recent modification is eliminate the boundaries
for determining who would be eligible for the exemption from the 5-year
limitation. And so----
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may be
allowed to address the Senator from Pennsylvania directly.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I will check this out and have an answer for you
directly, but I believe the actual surveys of household unemployment
are done by the Bureau of the Census and the data is analyzed by the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And I think you are on to a point which should be resolved. I will do
my best to do so. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from New York. There are two
additional points I wanted to make. No. 1, I stated before there would
be many cities that, for potentially the foreseeable future,
unfortunately, people in those cities would not be subject to the time
limit under the Democratic leader's bill. I point to the cities of New
York, which has an 8.7 percent unemployment rate; Los Angeles, which
has a 10.6 percent unemployment rate; there is an 8.2 percent
unemployment rate in Washington, DC; Detroit has a 10.8 percent rate.
Those are a few cities where the unemployment rate exceeds 8 percent.
As a result, under the bill put forward by Senator Daschle, none of the
people living in those cities would have any of their time limit being
worked off during those periods of high unemployment.
So you could have, potentially, in a city like Detroit, which has
historically had very high unemployment rates, no time limit for people
who live in those cities. You are not talking about small or
insignificant welfare populations. You are talking about New York, Los
Angeles, Detroit, Washington, Miami, and many others. You are talking
about a very large percentage of the caseload that will never,
potentially, be time limited or will be time limited to 10 or more
years. That is a big loophole in this bill, let us make no mistake
about it. I believe that needs to be addressed.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. SANTORUM. I yield to the Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. WELLSTONE. What the exception is saying--I agree that in the big
cities you have an unemployment rate at 8 percent and many higher. That
does not tell us anything about self-employment, part-time workers,
discouraged workers, which is much higher. Why is the Senator so
troubled by

[[Page S 12702]]
this when it could be a mother with small children who could be
penalized if they live in a community with high levels of
unemployment--unofficially defined unemployment? You keep calling that
a loophole? Why does he see it that way?
Mr. SANTORUM. What I think is important in this whole debate is an
understanding that the work requirement provision in the bill is not a
penalty, it is an opportunity. It is an opportunity for people who have
not had the chance to go out to find work, in many cases to be placed
in a work program so they can go out and be productive and learn skills
and, in many cases, because you have people who have never had jobs
before, they can learn what it is to get up in the morning and get
their children ready for day care, or for someone else to come into the
house, and get yourself to a work site, work an 8-hour day, and get
home and again provide for their children. That is an experience that,
unfortunately, many people in our society have not experienced. That is
a very valuable one. I add that it is something many people in our
society have never seen a parent do. They have no idea what it means to
grow up in a house where they never saw that happen.
So it is important that we provide to everyone the opportunity to
work and that we require it, in a sense, and that we say that this is a
temporary program; this is not a program that is going to go on and on.
Welfare is not a maintenance system where we provide for people in
poverty for indefinite periods of time, but it is a dynamic
transitional program that prepares people to get from a position where
they cannot work, or they are not prepared to work, to a position where
they will and do work. That is lost if you provide what I call
``impoverishment zones,'' not ``empowerment zones,'' where you
basically tell a group of people that because you are in a big city
that has high unemployment, we have no expectation that you will ever
be able to find work, and therefore you can stay on welfare. But the
rest, everybody else, we will change the system for you. But you in
Detroit and you in the City of New York, you cannot make it, and we do
not believe you can, so we are going to sort of write you off.
I do not want to write anybody off. I think everybody should have the
same level of expectations. As I cited before the Senator from
Minnesota came to the floor, the Riverside, CA, example, where during
the period of time of the GAIN program they experienced a 14 percent
drop in food stamps, a 16 percent drop in caseload, and a 20 percent
drop in AFDC, and they had in excess of 9 percent unemployment. People
were getting off the rolls, getting to work, doing the things that many
on both sides of the aisle said is a successful program.
So I believe it must happen. I think to write off particular areas of
the country because of difficulties in unemployment is an unwise move.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. SANTORUM. Yes.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. In making a thoughtful point and comment, he would be
aware that the GAIN program in Riverside, CA, is a program developed
under the Family Support Act?
Mr. SANTORUM. There have been many experiments done under waivers
under the Family Support Act.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. If I may put it in question form. He might know that in
the summer of 1992, President Bush visited Riverside and was making a
point that it seemed to be working and is catching on. I rushed to the
floor with a photograph of President Reagan signing the Family Support
Act and shaking hands with then-Governor Clinton, who was head of the
Governors Association at that time. He and the Governor of Delaware,
now our colleague in the House, worked together on a bipartisan basis.
I just wish that we would be conscious of this. I do not ask the
Senator to agree. But I am saying we have something working, and we may
miss it.
Mr. SANTORUM. If I can, I say to the distinguished Senator from New
York that there are isolated instances where the current law is working
and, I think, from social science evaluations, modestly working. We
have come in welfare to expect that modest improvement is as good as we
will ever get. Maybe that is the case. I am not satisfied with that as
a benchmark for the ceiling. I think what we need to do is, as I said,
to stretch the envelope.
While the Family Support Act of 1988 did create a window of
opportunity for certain areas to get waivers and to try new things and
to engage in work and other kinds of things, which we believe on this
side and I know many on the other side believe is the way to go, we
believe it needs to be more dramatic, that we need to do more and try
new things. That is what this Dole-Packwood bill does, I think, and
does it in a very dramatic way.
The final point I want to make is on the cost side. I know the
Senator from Minnesota is here. I say to my colleagues on the
Republican side, it is getting rather lonely over here. There are
plenty of opportunities to speak on this issue. I hope that those who
have comments will come to the floor and make their comments and debate
this very important issue. There are no speakers on this side at this
point. I say to those listening, if you have statements you would like
to make, this is a good time to come down and make those.
I say, with respect to the cost estimates on this program, what we
see is really a cost-neutral program on the part of the Democratic
leader's bill when it comes to welfare spending. The bill saves, over 7
years, roughly $20 billion. But $19 billion of the $20 billion in
savings is in food stamps. So what we see is what most on that side
would consider welfare and SSI and AFDC and child care. A lot of
those--in fact, most of those go up in spending. What we see is most of
the savings really being gathered out of the Food Stamp Program. I say
those, over a 7-year period, are rather modest compared to what the
Republicans suggest. I think we had about 50 percent more in savings
under the Food Stamp Program.
So it does not meet with what I think most would see as what is
necessary to get Government spending under control.
I say that even under the Republican bill, spending goes up
dramatically in virtually all these programs. I know the block granted
AFDC Program does not go up and the child care program does not. But
the rest of the programs--the SSI, Food Stamp Program, everything
else--goes up at very dramatic rates. In fact, we are talking about a
very minimal reduction in the spending on welfare in this country. If
this was being judged solely based on how much money we are saving on
welfare, I think both proposals in the eyes of the American public
would be considered a failure. This is not a big cut in welfare
spending. We are just barely curving the rate of increase in welfare.
I think given the dramatic nature of these proposals, that may be the
best we should do. As I had the discussion with the Senator from New
York, transitioning people, making the program a dynamic system is
expensive. We are turning a system where you basically have someone
behind a computer cranking out checks to people who come and show up
and verify certain things, and they get a check or stamp and leave.
That is not a lot of time consumed by that person, not a lot of effort
involved.
When you are taking that system from a maintenance processing system
and turning it into a system where you actually sit across the table
from someone and try to figure out what their problems are and how you
can help them and what we need to do to change their lives, that takes
energy, it takes time, it takes resources.
To suggest that we can change welfare at the time that we can slash
it or cut it dramatically, I think would be unwise. We have not done
that on this side. In fact, I have not heard a lot of comments on the
other side about how we are slashing welfare. The reason is because we
are not. Welfare is going to grow fairly dramatically over the next 7
years.
It will be different. It will be different than anything we have ever
seen. I think it is worth a try. We may come to the point in time where
we look at what has happened with this bill, if it is successful, and I
believe it will be, and all the attempts will be made and all the
different projects will be tried by the different States, you might
find out we get modest gains at best, or we get no gains.

[[Page S 12703]]

We may have to step back and say, is it worth it? You have some
writers in this town who are suggesting that we should just give up.
That it is not worth trying any more. It is not worth spending the
money. We may be there.
I think it is worth a try of a different way, and what we have
suggested here in this bill is a dramatically different way of dealing
with this problem. It is truly ending welfare as we know it. Welfare
will no longer be the image of someone showing up and receiving a
check, but almost go back to the image of the Depression when we had
the WPA--can the Senator help me?
Mr. MOYNIHAN. The WPA and PWA.
Mr. SANTORUM. And programs where you saw it more as a dynamic program
where people were there to do things, to make a positive contribution
to their community.
I am hopeful that is what will result in this. I am very optimistic
that we can find, I think, very solid support from the Republican side
and a significant number of Democrats to pass this Dole bill or
something very similar to it and do it while being very kind, I think
compassionate, in the truest sense of the word, compassionate with the
people who find themselves involved in this system, and at the same
time respectful of the people who work hard and pay taxes to fund the
system. I yield the floor.

Privilege of the Floor

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Carolyn
Clark, who is a fellow, be admitted for the duration of the debate on
welfare reform.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Nevada, I
will be relatively brief. I wanted to analyze the Daschle bill and I
wanted to talk about why I think the differences between the Daschle
bill and the Dole bill make a difference. I also wanted to talk about
some of the weaknesses in the minority leader's bill, or at least raise
some questions.
Again, I think there is hardly any comparison when I look at the two.
I think--and it is hard when you ask a Senator to yield, and the
Senator from Pennsylvania certainly did that--it is difficult to really
get into the debate, so let me try and first try and respond to some of
what was said.
When I hear Senators come to the floor and talk about how optimistic
they are and how they think this will be such a huge change, I sort of
think to myself that part of the problem is they are not really passing
legislation that is going to affect them or their children.
I think part of the problem, and I will try and stay away from the
harshness, I think the point can be made we would do better if we had
less hate and more debate. I do not come here to the floor with malice.
But, it does seem to me, Mr. President, that some of my colleagues
just want to ignore some unpleasant facts, some unpleasant realities.
My colleague from Pennsylvania talked about opportunities. Well, we
will take the minority leader's bill. If there is an 8 percent
officially defined unemployment, there are many more people who are
working part-time who are not counted. There are many people who are
discouraged workers who have dropped out. If you have that high of an
unemployment rate--by the way, in some of our cities it is higher than
that, than there is not really an opportunity for a single parent,
usually a mother, to find a job, but she gets cut off welfare anyway,
regardless of the employment conditions in the community.
How can that be called an opportunity? That is not an opportunity. Of
course, part of what is bogus about this reform effort is that if you
look at the job opportunity structure and you look at some of the
communities where we have large numbers of welfare mothers, the
unemployment level is so high, the under-employed level is so high,
that, as a matter of fact, there is no evidence whatever that the jobs
are going to be there that these women can support their families on.
So in the absence of that evidence, with those kind of high rates, it
is hardly unreasonable to say if you cannot obtain the opportunities,
the employment opportunities, because they are not there, then we are
certainly not going to cut you off of assistance for yourself and your
children. That is what this is about. That is really what this is
about.
Mr. President, as I look at the Daschle bill on the floor, I do think
there are some very significant and positive features about this piece
of legislation. I think the main feature, Mr. President, that I want to
zero in on has to do with maintaining the commitment to children to
make sure that there will be benefits for some of the most vulnerable
citizens in this country.
Today at caucus, and my colleague from New York, Senator Moynihan, is
free if I say this and as he listens it seems that it was too personal
and he did not mean for this to be public, I want him to cut me off. He
said something that has stayed with me most of this afternoon. Senator
Moynihan said the last piece of legislation that President Kennedy
signed publicly, was a piece of legislation we all had high hopes for:
This was deinstitutionalization.
It made sense as a philosophy. We would take people in the mental
hospitals and we would basically move them out and then there would be
community-based care. But we never did that. What we wound up with in
all too many communities in this country was an ever larger population
of homeless people. We see that all over the country.
Then the analysis was there that it was a lack of affordable housing.
What Senator Moynihan said today during the caucus meeting was really
the answer to the question: We did it. We passed that legislation. But,
we did not follow through on the commitment, and that is what happened.
He then went on to say, and this is exactly how I feel about this
debate, that we should not pass a piece of legislation that ends the
basic commitment that there will be support there for families, for
single parents and children. The support has got to be there, it will
not just be block granted to States who can pretty much do what they
want to do.
It does not matter whether there is a recession or not or what kind
of resources are invested,
if we end that kind of commitment, that is a commitment we made as a
nation, then I will tell you exactly what is going to happen. It is
easy for Senators to tell us this is an experiment. ``Gee, we think
this is going to do a lot better.'' It is not them. It is not their
families. I will tell you what is going to happen. I will predict it.
We will have many more children among the ranks of the homeless. And
then we are going to ask ourselves the question: How did that happen?

We did it. That is exactly what the Dole bill does. I do not think it
is the intention of the Senators, but that is exactly, that is
precisely what the effect of this are going to be.
To the credit of the minority leader, that commitment is maintained
in his bill, at least for 5 years. And it is important.
There is a second issue which is, I think, maybe one of the most
important features of the Daschle bill, the Work First bill. The
Daschle bill provides childcare. That is, if you are going to say to a
single parent--almost always a woman; quite often men who should be
there with support are not there--you work, and she has small children,
what about the children? Where is the commitment of resources to child
care? Actually, what we are doing here in the Congress, for those
citizens who are watching this debate, is we are cutting investment in
child care.
So, we are saying to parents: You go to work. You have small
children. That is it. And we do not provide any support for child care.
By definition, please remember, in spite of all of the scapegoating and
all of the stereotypes, there is not a welfare benefit in this country
that is even up to the official definition of poverty, and now we are
saying to single parents, almost always a woman: You go to work and we
do not invest any resources in child care. The Daschle bill does make
that investment.
You cannot have welfare reform--all you have out here right now, at
least with the Dole bill, is reverse reform. You are saying to a
parent: You go to work. It does not matter if you have small children.
We know you are poor. You work, and there are no resources

[[Page S 12704]]
for child care so you can afford decent child care for your children.
That is antifamily. That is antifamily. I challenge any Senator in
here, how would you like it if you were the single parent of low
income, told you had to work--and you wanted to work. There is more
dignity in work. And you hoped it would be a decent job. There is
nothing you would like to do more, but there was no way--let us not kid
ourselves. In a lot of these communities where we have large
populations of welfare mothers, there are not an abundance of jobs that
pay anything near what Senators make, or even middle-income salaries.
So we are not going to be talking about, by and large, high-wage jobs.
You are told, ``You take the job. It does not matter.''
And you say, ``OK, I want to work in that job, and it is $6.50 an
hour and I will do it and I want to.'' And then you are told, ``By the
way, but when it comes to your two children who are under 3, there are
no resources for child care. You figure out what to do.'' And you
cannot afford it. That is why many mothers get off welfare and then go
right back on.
The minority leader's bill makes a commitment to child care. I do not
know how my colleagues on the other side, in all due respect, can deal
with that contradiction.
The third feature I think is important is that, in the minority
leader's bill, there is the transition so people are not immediately
cut off Medicaid. I do not remember the precise provision of the
majority leader's bill. I ask the Senator from New York, is there a
transition period of time for Medicaid in the Dole bill?
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I would say I do not know. There is, of course, a 1-
year transition in the current law of the Family Support Act. We will
find that out.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Because my understanding is the Daschle bill allows
for the currently provided year of transitional Medicaid, plus an extra
year of transitional care on a sliding scale basis to ease the
transition.
I do not think that in the Packwood-Dole bill, there is such an
allowance for that second year of transition.
It seems to me, now we have a situation where we are saying it does
not matter what the unemployment level is in your community and, in
addition, it does not matter from State to State, what States decide to
do. It does not matter whether there is a recession. It does not matter
how many children are born into poverty. It does not matter what the
population growth is going to be. It does not matter whether or not
there is going to be a commitment of resources to child care. By and
large, we are ending our commitment to low-income children. And in
addition, you have 6 months, that is it, that is the only guarantee you
have of being able to keep your Medicaid.
This is called reform? These women and their children are in a worse
position than when they all started. The Daschle bill is a significant
improvement over that.
I say to my colleagues, we should not be so reckless with the lives
of children. That is what I do not understand. I have colleagues, on
both sides of the aisle, who are friends. I understand the political
climate in the country. I understand some of the scapegoating. But I
cannot understand how men and women of such good will can be so
reckless with the lives of children.
The minority, the Daschle bill, as I understand it, does not block
grant food stamps. There is a reason for that. The Senator from New
York knows this history well. What happened--and it was President
Nixon, as I remember, who really took the final initiative in making
sure there was a national standard. Although the Federal Government was
going to pay that bill, States got to decide what would be the level of
benefits and many States had the level of benefits pegged at an
extremely low level. Much to the shame of the United States of America,
we saw it on television with documentaries about Hunger USA. We saw
children with distended bellies, and we learned about scurvy and
rickets and malnutrition and hunger among children in America.
Therefore, President Nixon led the way and we set national standards
and we had a national food stamp program. We are a national community.
We made a national commitment to children. Now we are going to back
away from that? The minority leader's bill does not back away from that
commitment, nor should it, Mr. President.
Questions to raise. Maybe my colleague from New York, or colleague
from Tennessee, can help me out on this. Again, I raise these questions
more in a constructive way. This is just out of intellectual integrity
that I want to raise these questions about the minority leader's bill.
I cannot cheerlead on everything.
There still is this feature in this legislation that, as I understand
it--we can get technical--it is in the Dole bill, it is in the Daschle
bill, that now counts LIHEAP benefits as income, low-income energy
assistance. So what happens is, for the purpose of calculating food
stamp benefits, LIHEAP benefits, low-income energy assistance, gets
counted as income and this becomes this classic choice of eat or heat.
I do not know why we are doing that. That is the question I raise.

The second question somebody has to ask on the floor of the Senate, I
talked about earlier the importance of making sure we do not back away.
It is my understanding--and I quote from an Urban Institute study--of
all families that have become dependent on welfare systems, about 43
percent receive benefits for less than 24 months. But at any point in
time there are many more long-term recipients, for example, more than
75 percent of families on welfare, at any point in time, are on for
more than 60 months.
So if it is an aggregate 5-year period, I have some very serious
concerns about what we are doing because I think quite often the
pattern is that a mother--by the way, mothers do not need Senators to
tell them that they ought to work. Most are--75 percent within 2
years--are off welfare and are working.
Now, the problem is that all too often what happens is, think about
this: You go to work, and you try to work out a child care arrangement.
But you cannot afford it. Then you go back to welfare. By the way, for
the low-income people, the monthly expenses of child care is not like 7
percent. It is 35 percent, or 40 percent of income. Or you go to work
again.
When Sheila and I were younger, we did not have much money at all. We
had this experience. You find out. It is the most horrifying thing in
the world when you leave your child, whom you dearly love, with a child
care center and the conditions are awful.
By the way, according to the national reports on the state of child
care, we are not investing resources in child care--not just for low
income, but for middle income. You get paid more money to work the zoos
than you do to take care of children in the United States of America.
Mr. President, so what happens? You are supposed to be there at 5 to
pick up your child. You show up at 4, and you find the conditions are
awful. So it did not work. Now you are back to welfare. Or, Mr.
President, remember, you are a single parent. You get sick or your
child gets sick, and your child is sick more than a week. You get laid
off work. This happens all the time.
So I will raise three questions and then get a response. I am really
very worried about this 5-year period because it seems to me that if,
in fact, the Urban Institute is right and more than 75 percent of
families on welfare at any point in time will receive welfare for more
than 60 months, we are cutting a lot of people off, who are mainly
children, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the children who do
not give the big campaign contributions, the children who are not the
big players, the children who are not the heavy hitters, the children
who do not get on television with their ads. They are the ones that
some of these proposals treat so harshly, though I must say again I
believe that the minority leader's bill, thank God, is at least a
significant improvement over Packwood-Dole.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, does the Senator wish to have these data
at this point?
Mr. WELLSTONE. I would be. I will yield for that.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am happy to.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may address the Senator
directly.

[[Page S 12705]]

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Frist). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. It happens that we presented this data in the debate
that was a truncated debate in August. The Senator is exactly right in
what he has said. But there is more to say. This was the work of Donna
Pavetti at the Urban Institute--the Urban Institute was established
under the auspices of President Johnson in the 1960's--of
``distribution of total time on welfare.''
The Senator is absolutely right. About 27 percent of welfare
recipients are on for less than 1 year. About 40 percent are on for
less than 2 years.
We do not know as much as we should. We have been very poor about
gathering data. We, in the last Congress, enacted a Welfare Indicators
Act, which I spent 14 years trying to get passed, that will start
giving us an annual report on the subject.
So this is data from the Urban Institute. A number of people who go
on AFDC are two groups. There is this group that is on for 2 years or
less, 40 percent, 41 percent. We know who they are. They are married
women whose marriages breakup. They need some time to get their affairs
together. And they do. A very refreshing counsel of the Manpower
Demonstration Research Corp., when we were drafting the Family Support
Act, was to say, do not bother with these good people. The Senator is
absolutely correct--at any given time 76 percent, three-quarters, of
the persons on welfare have been there more than 5 years.
The Urban Institute also went on to estimate the number of families
affected by a 60-month time limit, a 5-year time limit. Between the
year 2001 and the year 2005--2001 you can reach out and touch that--1.4
million families will have exceeded the 5 years. By 2005, 10 years from
now, 2 million families will have exceeded the 5 years. This assumes
the caseload does not grow. That is half the caseload.
You were kind enough to mention what I had said in our caucus today.
I said it earlier on the floor. In 10 years time we will wonder where
these ragged children came from. Why are they sleeping on grates? Why
are they making life miserable for themselves and others? What
happened? We will have a city swarming with pauper children, penniless
and without residence. You said it could not happen. It happened to the
mentally ill. And half the families in 10 years will have been dropped
by a 5-year time limit.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator so hugely. And this is the point.
Mr. President, I would ask these tables be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the tables were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

DISTRIBUTION OF TOTAL TIME ON WELFARE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
All current
recipients
Time on welfare (in months) New entrants at a point
(percent) in time
(percent)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1-12........................................ 27.4 4.5
13-24....................................... 14.8 4.8
25-36....................................... 10.0 4.9
37-48....................................... 7.7 5.0
49-60....................................... 5.5 4.5
Over 60..................................... 34.6 76.3
---------------------------
Mean Duration (in years).................. 6.10 12.98
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Urban Institute, 1995.

NUMBER OF FAMILIES AFFECTED BY A 60-MONTH TIME LIMIT, FY 2001-FY 2005
[in millions]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Families
currently
Fiscal year receiving New entrants Total families
benefits
------------------------------------------------------------------------
2001.................... 1.34 .08 1.42
2002.................... 1.41 .24 1.65
2003.................... 1.37 .43 1.80
2004.................... 1.29 .61 1.90
2005.................... 1.19 .77 1.96
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: This table assumes that the caseload remains at its current level
of 4.35 million families headed by an adult over the next 10 years.

Source: Urban Institute, 1995.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the President for allowing me to ask the
Senator to yield.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I have more to say, more of a critique.
But I think that what the Senator from New York just said was very
powerful. I cannot add to that at this time.
I would yield the floor to the Senator from Rhode Island. I ask the
Senator from Nevada, will the Senator from Rhode Island then speak?
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I believe the Senator from Rhode Island was told he
would be in sequence after Senator Wellstone, and that our good friend
from Nevada knows that. We look forward to our most distinguished,
revered colleague.
Mr. PELL. I thank my colleagues and my friends, one and the same.
I am very glad that the Senate has resumed debating the matter of
welfare reform. And I am encouraged that the first few days of this
debate--both before the August recess and again today--have been
composed largely of thoughtful concerns and constructive suggestions
about what can be done to make the current system work better and cost
less.
In reviewing the legislation before us, however, we must each decide
for ourselves what it is we believe about the current welfare system
and how it can best move people from dependency to self-sufficiency,
and from poverty to a living wage.
I continue to believe that our welfare system should provide
temporary-- I emphasize the word temporary--financial assistance to
those in need. There are millions of people who fall on hard times;
losing a job, getting divorced, or becoming widowed should not be a
ticket to poverty. Welfare is there largely to help women and children
get back on their feet--and to protect them from hunger, homelessness,
and desperation in the interim. In this respect, welfare is a
compassionate and needed social program and I support its continued
existence.
But there is also no question that the system has, at times, been
abused, and that it has been viewed by some welfare recipients as a
free ride with no concomitant responsibility. These individuals, whom I
believe to be a minority of welfare recipients, have nevertheless
prompted understandable wrath in many other Americans who work hard,
play by the rules, and do not receive any Government assistance. I
understand their anger at what they perceive as a Government handout,
and I think there is considerable merit to their claim that this abuse
must stop.
In fact, many of us who believe that welfare has a role to play in
helping people get a hand up also believe that certain responsibilities
go along with Government help. I strongly believe that those welfare
recipients who are able to work should work, and that every American
should understand that our Nation's welfare system provides a safety
net, and not a way of life.
But with that said, the question arises ``how do we get people to
work?'' Do you simply impose a requirement that they must work to
receive benefits or they will no longer receive them? And what do we do
if they try to find a job but can't due to high unemployment, a lack of
skills or education, or an inability to find anyone to care for their
infant child? Do we simply say that if they do not work they will
receive no benefits?
To me, Mr. President, that approach is too harsh and far too unlikely
to produce the results we seek. What we want to do, what we need to do,
is create a system that moves people off of welfare--for good. A system
that gives them the tools they need to find a job, get employed, and
stay employed at a living wage. Only then--and perhaps it will take
some additional investment by both the Federal Government and the
States--can we end the cycle of dependency and poverty that keeps
generation after generation on welfare and discouraged from seeking to
work.
The Democratic alternative--the Work First bill--addresses many of
these issues in a thoughtful and comprehensive way. It fosters the
transition from welfare to work by providing health care, and, when
needed, access to affordable child care services. And it provides a
reasonable period of time for people to move into the workforce.
In fact, the Democratic alternative involves welfare recipients in a
full-scale, full-time search for real employment; a job they can be
proud to have. Its Work First Employment Block Grant makes one and only
one demand on States: an increasing number of their
welfare recipients must find a job and keep the job. How the State
does that is up to the individual State.

Mr. President, on another matter, I am distressed to see that the
Dole bill lumps vocational and adult education

[[Page S 12706]]
with welfare reform. Simply put, education is not welfare. Vocational
and education programs are not, and should not be considered welfare.
And while I certainly endorse enthusiastically the idea of a welfare
recipient undertaking education as a means of obtaining a good job to
move off of welfare, I do not think that this welfare legislation
should tinker with existing education or vocational education programs,
and shall oppose their inclusion in this legislation. In fact, we have
already reported a comprehensive education and training bill from the
Labor and Human Resources Committee, which I supported. It is a very
important bill, and ought to be considered independently and in its own
right.
Mr. President, there are a number of other parts of the Democratic
bill that I think are crucial to our effort to reform the welfare
system. I strongly believe in ensuring the ability of all who
financially qualify to receive welfare, and thus do not support the
concept of a limited block grant. Such an approach, adopted by the Dole
bill, would leave millions of women and their dependent children with
no financial assistance at all. And further, it would prevent them from
participating in the new system we hope to create--which will give them
the tools to get off of welfare once and for all.
Mr. President, as we undertake the very difficult task of reforming
our Nation's welfare system, we may be tempted to seek simple answers
to complex questions or be moved by rhetoric rather than fact. In my
view, two basic principles should guide us in these discussions:
fairness to taxpayers and compassion to those in need. I hope that my
colleagues will share this view and spend the time and care necessary
to make the right changes, not simply any changes.
I yield the floor.
Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. May I just once again say it is a great pleasure to
have the opportunity twice in one week to express my great appreciation
to the Senator from Rhode Island, who has very cogent remarks on
education and carries weight in this Chamber. None has done so much as
he in a generation of legislating. He is revered, respected. I hope and
trust he will be listened to.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. PELL. I thank my colleague.
Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. REID. I see the majority leader on the floor.
Before the Senator from Rhode Island leaves, may I say a few words in
his direction?
Mr. DOLE. I just want to get a unanimous-consent request.
Go ahead.
Mr. REID. Mr. Leader, I will just ask him to stay.
If the Senator from Rhode Island would stay at his desk for a couple
minutes.
Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. DOLE. I say this has been cleared by the Democratic leader.
I ask unanimous consent that the vote occur on the Daschle amendment
numbered 2282 at 4 p.m. Thursday.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOLE. That will be tomorrow.
For the information of all Senators, there will be no further votes
today. However, Members who wish to debate the Daschle amendment are
urged to do so this evening.
Also, Members should be aware, prior to the close of business
Thursday, the two leaders will ask consent to limit the remaining
amendments in order to the welfare bill to finish the welfare reform
bill by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.
And there will also be after the vote, depending on the vote on the
Daschle amendment, additional votes and debate tomorrow evening.
But we are trying to accommodate a number of our friends who want to
attend the very historic baseball game tonight in Baltimore to see Cal
Ripken, Jr., break the record of Lou Gehrig. So we hope that all those
who are able to go will be very cooperative the rest of the week.
I thank the Senator from Nevada.

____________________