John Ashcroft

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I send my amendment to the desk.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back on the amendment.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I am sure we will be able to accomplish what we need to accomplish in substantially less time. Mr. President, thank you for this opportunity to offer an amendment. I believe that it is important for us in this Congress, and in the bill which is before the Senate, to change the character of welfare. That is the challenge which is before us. We have to change a system which has provided people with a condition--a condition of dependence, a condition of relying on others, a condition which has been a trap--and we need to change welfare from being a condition to being a transition. The welfare situation should be a time when we prepare ourselves for the next step in our lives, when we prepare ourselves to be out of dependence and out of reliance on others, we prepare ourselves to be industrious, to be independent and reliant upon ourselves. Welfare cannot be something that is a lifestyle. It has to be something that is just for a while. It has to be something that moves us forward. I believe there are fundamental components of this bill which will do that, but we can enhance them substantially in their capacity to change the character of welfare, to change it from a way of life, to change it to a way of escape, to change it from a lifestyle, to change it to being a transition, to change it from a condition to being a transition. Mr. President, according to Senator Moynihan, the average welfare recipient spends 12.98 years on the rolls. That is a substantial and monumental waste of human resource. We have individuals who are reliant, who are dependent, whose level of contribution and productivity in our culture is very, very, very low, and that 12 years is a teaching time as well as a time of existence. Unfortunately, that 12 years becomes a time when young people are taught dependence instead of independence. They are taught reliance on Government instead of self-reliance. One of the things we should ask ourselves about everything we do in Government is: What does it teach? What does it reinforce? What basic principles and values are advanced by it? And a welfare system that provides for 12.98 years as the average time a welfare recipient spends on the rolls--what about those that are on there longer? This is not teaching something that is valuable to our culture. We need to be reinforcing, providing incentives for support for a system that does not institute a condition for life, making a career of welfare, but energizes a transition for life, leaving welfare and going to work. The 12.98 years is reflected in the fact that we have had soaring rates in the kind of social conditions that intensify the challenge and the condition of welfare--a 600-percent increase in illegitimacy over the last three decades. I think we can agree that the welfare system we now have is a miserable failure, but if we do not build into this system things to change the outcomes, we are going to end up with the same problems just being tougher and tougher to solve. Industrialist friends of mine tell me that whatever system you have, you can be assured that it is perfectly designed to give you what you are getting, and if you do not like what you are getting, you need to change the system. This welfare bill that we are debating today will shorten the time from 12.98 years down. It will limit most welfare recipients to a 5- year lifetime limit on temporary assistance to needy families. The big challenge of the 12-year problem is, What kind of habits do you build in 12 years? I suspect that if you involve yourself in a routine for 12 years, it is very difficult ever to break that routine. Sociologists tell us, if you want to lose weight--that is one of the things I want to do--they say you have to change your habits for about 6 or 7 weeks in order to have a new habit of diet, a new way to consume food. We are talking about changing habits that people have hardened for 12.98 years on average. One of the problems I have is that we have said we are going to change this by shortening the time period to 5 years. Well, 5 years will build a habit which is so strong that it is almost impossible to break. I think we need to find a way to restructure the system so that everyone looks at that 5-year period as if it is an insurance policy and they do not want to take any more out of that bank of 5 years than they need to at the moment because there might come a time sometime later in life when they would have a desperate need for assistance. I believe that is what we need to do. So we need to help people understand that there is 5 years. That is a lifetime limit. You should only draw from that savings account or reserve for emergencies what you desperately need and not use that 5 years as a way to create the habit of dependence which will be almost impossible for you to break. But this bill would allow for most individuals 5 years--5 years-- without work. Five years without work would build such a habit that I believe we would nearly disable the individuals, as we have with our current system. I was stunned when I read in one of my home State papers last year that there was an experiment under a waiver granted by the Federal Government where they invited 140 welfare recipients to show up at a Tyson Foods plant. Only half of them showed up for work. They were invited to come in to look for a job. Of the half that showed up, only 39 accepted jobs. Of the 39 that accepted jobs, fewer than 30 were on the job a week after. See, what we have done is we have built habits. We have established a condition for welfare. We do not have welfare as a transition, as a place of movement; it has become a place of repose. I believe we need to change that. For us to say that, even under this bill, which is a significant reform, for us to say that we would allow people to have 5 straight years without work, where your self-esteem or your skills, your motivation would atrophy, would wither--if you do not use a muscle for 5 weeks, it gets weak. If you do not do not use it for 5 months, it almost disappears. If you do not use it for 5 years, it is gone. We have here the most important muscle in human character--self- esteem, skills, motivations. We are still providing in this bill that for as long as 5 years you can simply be there not working. The bill, as it stands, requires 15 percent of the unexempted population to work in the first year period, and 25 percent in the second year period--25 percent. That is one out of four. So for three out of four, they could go right by the first 2-year period and not even be involved in work. I believe, though, as a result of this, that welfare recipients, other than that 25 percent who actually went to work, could just choose to coast along for the full 5 years of benefits with no additional incentive to get a job. I think that is where this bill needs correction. It needs dramatic correction. I propose to amend this welfare bill to allow welfare recipients, able-bodied welfare recipients without infant children, to collect only 24 months of consecutive temporary assistance-to-needy-families benefits. At the end of those 2 years, if the recipient still refuses to work, I say, cut the benefit. What this really does is not result in cut benefits; this results in more people being willing to work. Instead of saying to an individual who gets on welfare, if you work the system, you can last for 5 years, create the habits of reliance, create the habits of repose, reject the habits of industry and work; this would basically say, you better get to work, learning to get a job right away, because after 2 years, in spite of the fact that there is a 5-year lifetime limit, there is a 24-month consecutive receipt-of- benefit limit for able-bodied adults without infant children. If a welfare recipient then decides not to work in the 2-year time span, the payment would cease. By doing this, we simply hope to inject a concept which is too novel which ought to be commonplace. That is the concept that work is beneficial and that it pays better and is better than welfare. Otherwise, we are simply going to be tempting people to stay on and approximate, or approach at least, as much as they can of the 12.98 years of time on welfare, which is now a debilitating and disabling influence in the American culture for too many Americans. Our intention is to leave the time period between any times you consume your 24 consecutive months total up to the States, so that recipients could not leave the welfare rolls and sign up again a week later. I think States could make these judgments about what kind of interval that would be needed between the 24-month periods. Our central point, our responsibility here, is to say that we want to provide as part of the structure of our reform the energy to change, legislation that changes welfare from being a lifestyle to being a transition. We want to start to energize a commitment on the part of recipients to make the changes in the way they live so that they avoid prolonged exposures to the welfare system and find themselves at an earlier time being capable of sustaining themselves. We want welfare recipients to look at this 5-year period as a lifetime cushion, not to be consumed in the first need or the second need, hopefully never to be consumed. Our objective should be that no one ever bumps the 5-year limit. Our objective should be that we energize people to go to work so quickly and so enthusiastically that they maintain their reserve to the day they die. Permitting able-bodied welfare recipients to remain on assistance for a straight 5-year-long block of time simply would reinforce, reteach, perpetuate, and underscore the current cycle of dependence. We need to stop this cycle of dependence, not just for individuals, but for what it teaches to our children. Welfare has become an intergenerational phenomenon, where people are on so long that their children grow up knowing only one lifestyle--it is welfare. By limiting the uninterrupted block of time that welfare recipients remain on the rolls, we will reduce the level of dependence on government assistance. Welfare can be habit forming, and has been habit forming. It can be addictive. It can be destructive, and it has been. We need to take the structural components of the welfare system, which are dehumanizing, demeaning and disabling, out of the system. We need to energize each individual to view welfare as transitional. We should do that by saying there can be no more than 24 consecutive months on welfare for any able-bodied individual without infant children, unless they will work. I just indicate that on Tuesday of this last week President Clinton ordered that in case we do not pass welfare reform in the next few months, the Department of Health and Human Services will give States the power to cut off benefits if an able-bodied adult refuses to work after 2 years. This is not a Draconian message. This is a message and this is a concept called for by the President of the United States. For us to deliver a welfare system back to the American people which reinforces, underlines, and strengthens the bad habit of long-term dependency would not only be an affront to the American people, but it would be our failure to respond to a President who has asked us to do much better. There is something much better that we should be doing, and something we can do. If we want to break the long-term aspects, the intergenerational aspects of welfare, we have to be a part of this teaching idea in a real way. When I was Governor of the State of Missouri and I had the great privilege of serving the people of my State, we came to Washington to ask for a waiver, a waiver from the regulations of the Federal Government. The waiver was simply this: We said, please give Missouri the right to say to welfare recipients, if you do not make sure your kids are in school, you will not get your full benefit. It was a way of saying welfare is not a place where you can throw responsibility to the wind. It was a way of saying, if you are a parent, you have to be responsible for at least some fundamental basic things, like getting your kids to school, because we do not want your kids to stay at home and learn welfare, we want your kids to go to school and learn how to be productive. We were able to get that waiver. The program was called People Attaining Self-Sufficiency, PASS. PASS had some reference to school. We wanted kids to pass in school by having good attendance. I think there is another part of the structure of welfare reform that we should embrace as we send the bill to the President of the United States. We should not have to have States coming to Washington, waiting 2 or 3 years, filling out enough paperwork to choke a horse in order to have the privilege of saying to people, ``We expect you to make sure your kids are in school or we are not going to make sure your check is in the mail.'' It is that simple. It is very fundamental. If you are on welfare, your kids should be in school, because it is especially important to break the intergenerational chain of dependence. Part of this measure is to make sure we say to the individuals, ``You have some responsibility.'' Another important concept of this amendment is that it would allow States to require temporary assistance to needy families and food stamp recipients to either have a high school education or work toward attaining a high school education. It is my judgment that it is not very realistic to say to people, ``We are sending you to work, but you do not have to have the kind of fundamental and basic skills that come from education.'' I am not talking about worker training here, I am talking about education. I am talking about the fact that an educated person can read the manual and train himself or herself. I am talking about the fundamental responsibility of culture, not the responsibility of a business to train people to do its business. I am talking about the fundamental responsibility of a culture to train its citizens by way of education. Education is different, really, from training. Education is the basis upon which training builds. A person who cannot read or write will have a hard time, no matter how much training she gets. I believe if a person is going to be receiving this assistance that we need to say to them, ``You are going to have to invest in yourself to the extent of having a high school education or a general equivalency diploma. The truth of the matter is you have a responsibility, and you have to be prepared to meet that responsibility.'' As a matter of fact, this is a far more important thing than it has ever been before, because once we put a time limit on these matters, we need to energize people to be ready in order to fend for themselves when the time limit has expired. I hope we will have a 2-year time length on consecutive months of benefits, 24 months, and I believe in a 5-year lifetime benefit, as well. With that in mind we will have to make sure that people can fend for themselves at the expiration of that time. Mr. President, I reserve the balance of my time, but I am happy to yield back my time on the amendment when all time is ready to be yielded back.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I move the point of order be waived.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Is the Senator aware there is a 6-month grace period?

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise with an amendment that would allow States to require welfare recipients to bring up to date the immunizations of their minor children. Immunizations in America are free to individuals who are on welfare. Yet we have a number of children who are, every year, afflicted with serious disabling diseases which will persist into disabilities of their adulthood for lack of immunizations. This amendment would simply provide States the authority, as it relates to programs which States share the cost of, and would require immunizations where the Federal Government funds the entirety of the welfare benefit. If you did not provide your children with the immunizations that were appropriate, you would have a 20-percent decrease until the children were properly immunized. This is in the interest of children.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. ASHCROFT. I do request a rollcall vote.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Is the Senator aware this is just a 20-percent decrease in the benefit for the 6-month interval?

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, the debate over the provisions before us today represents an opportunity to change the way we view welfare in this country. The question is simple: Will we continue to allow Federal assistance to be a way of life? That is the fundamental choice we face. Will we see welfare as the intergenerational problem that it is, or will we continue to fund this failure, this dependence? There are a number of things in this bill that would help us make sure welfare is no more than a transition. We put time limits on welfare, for instance. But if we really want to move people from dependence to independence, if we want individuals to move from welfare to work, if we really want individuals to change their behavior, I think we ought to be asking people to display a set of behaviors which readies them for the real world. If you want to be part of the working world, you ought to be drug- free. When you go to work in the private sector, this is the standard. As the chart behind me indicates, even in small firms with 1 to 500 employees, 62 percent test for drugs. Similarly, 88 percent of all firms employing over 10,000 people in America require drug testing. Now, I ask a simple question: What good does it do for us to allow people to remain on drugs if they have little or no capacity to be placed in the private sector? If you are on welfare, you should be off drugs. Period. That is the point that I make, that the American people should not be asked to spend their hard-earned resources supporting the drug habits of uninterested addicts. Under my amendment, each State would be required to create a random drug-testing program as well as sanction those individuals who test positive. It does mandate that the States require drug testing. No question. It is time, however, for us to stop funding the drug habits of individuals who have no intention of working toward a job. I am pleased, then, to send this amendment to the desk, and to say to those individuals who are on welfare, it is time to move from dependence to independence and opportunity. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that this not be deducted from the time on the amendment.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Reserving the right to object, is there a reason the Senator wants to make his remarks in advance of the vote? If the Senator from Connecticut needs to leave for other reasons, I would indicate to him that that is the condition in which the Senator from Missouri finds himself.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, thank you very much. The case of Jason Allen is not an isolated case. I could fill the Record with cases of children who are drug abused, or victims of the drug abuse of their parents, all funded by a welfare system that is the subject of this debate. This amendment does nothing to impair our ability to care for children. Far from it. This amendment merely says that we ought to provide incentives for our children to live in drug-free environments, not drug-laden environments. If we care about children, we cannot allow the current devastation to persist. It has occurred for too long. It has ruined families and ruined children. This amendment is an important first step in the right direction. With that, Madam President, I thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, I would be pleased to yield the remainder of my time for raising the point of order by the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, I move to waive the Budget Act for consideration of my amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ASHCROFT. There is no objection on my part.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Reserving the right to object, might the Senator from New Mexico estimate the time at which a vote would occur on this amendment, on the motion to waive the budget act?

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, in 1994, one out of every four 2-year- olds had not received the proper vaccinations. This statistic worsens appreciably in urban areas. For example, a 1995 survey of State health department clinics in Houston found that only 14 percent of the children were up-to-date on their immunizations. Because these children are not being immunized, the Centers for Disease Control reported 1,537 needless and easily avoidable incidences of mumps in 1994. Such a deplorable lack of basic preventive health care is inexcusable, particularly since immunizations are free in America. The Vaccines for Children Program administered by the National Immunization Program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides free vaccines to children under 18 who are eligible for Medicaid, or are uninsured or underinsured. When a child in America is not immunized, it is entirely the fault of the parent. It is a blatantly irresponsible act not to immunize a child. We should not be paying welfare recipients to abdicate their responsibility. The welfare system should encourage people to take care of their own. Children are the future, and in order to break the cycle of dependence, children of welfare recipients need every break available. All schools require immunization records for a child to be enrolled. An unimmunized child can be denied admission to school. And a child that doesn't go to school will probably end up on welfare. What's wrong with requiring parents on welfare to have their children immunized? We shouldn't be paying parents to neglect their children. This amendment allows States to sanction welfare recipients of TANF, and other States programs who do not immunize their children. This amendment also requires States to sanction Food Stamps and SSI recipients who do not immunize their children. Again, immunizations are free to Medicaid recipients and the uninsured in hospitals and clinics across the Nation, so there is simply no legitimate excuse for parents not to have their children immunized. Additionally, States think immunization requirements for government aid are a good idea. According to the American Public Welfare Association 12 States have received Federal waivers to implement AFDC requirements for immunization. For example: Delaware, immunization is required for pre-school children. Failure to comply results in $50 decrease per month in AFDC grant. Indiana, recipients must show proof within 12 months of AFDC application that children are immunized. Families in noncompliance are sanctioned $90 per month. Michigan sanctions AFDC families $25 per month if parents fail to immunize pre-school-age children according to State policy. Mississippi children under 6 must receive regular immunization and checkups or sanction of $25 per month applies. AFDC preschoolers in Texas must be immunized or the State may sanction the family $25 per child. And finally, in Virginia, AFDC recipients with children who have not been immunized receive fiscal sanctions of $50 for the first child and $25 for each additional child. This amendment is the best means to ensure that all children everywhere are immunized against deadly, but easily controllable diseases such as mumps, tetanus, measles, polio, et cetera. It is a first step to encouraging responsibility in a system that breeds decadence and dependence--a step upward on the ladder of opportunity out of our current welfare system's net of ensnarement.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I yield myself 4 minutes of the time remaining. I have to say that I agree totally with the senior Senator from Massachusetts. This amendment is about children. As a matter of fact, drug use has been damning to children. It has, as a matter of fact, been lethal. I would like to introduce you to one such child. This young man is no longer with us. His name was Jason. His mother was a 21-year-old recipient of the welfare of which we speak, and she funded her drug habit with the methamphetamine drug known as crank. Not only was her child born drug-addicted, but as a result of the nursing, the child literally died of an overdose of methamphetamine. So, this amendment is about children. It is also about drug use and what that use does to children. It kills them. It is time for us to stop this killing. This amendment is also about preparing for a job. If we are willing to say that people who are involved in job training should be subject to mandatory drug tests, as we did last October, it seems to me that welfare recipients should be held to the same standard. That is what this amendment would do. Mr. President, let us not lure welfare recipients into a false sense of security; stay on drugs and we will still support you. Let us make it clear from the very beginning. If you are on welfare, you will be off drugs. The taxpayers and the children who aspire to a better tomorrow deserve nothing less. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, I ask that the Senator from Oklahoma [Mr. Nickles] be added as a cosponsor, and I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Alabama.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I would like to use my time.