Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, the amendment before us is a very, very simple amendment. Let me just relate some facts about the amendment. On January 1, 1995, Indiana started a welfare reform pilot program in which welfare recipients were required to work or lose their benefits. The Legal Services Corporation of Indiana filed a lawsuit to block the implementation of that law. On October 1, 1991, Michigan, the first State in the Nation ever to comprehensively reform welfare, began its program to deny general assistance to nonworking, able-bodied, single adults without children. The Legal Services Corporation of Michigan filed a lawsuit to try to block the implementation of that law. In 1992, the New Jersey Family Development Act, which among other things, denied additional AFDC payments to mothers for children conceived while on welfare. Five federally funded New Jersey Legal Services grantees filed lawsuits to block the implementation of that law. In 1994, Pennsylvania law ended welfare benefits for nonworking, able-bodied recipients. The Legal Services Corporation in Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit to block the implementation of that law. Not one single State in the Union has tried to reform welfare, has tried to implement a mandatory work requirement, has tried to set up a limit on the amount of time you can be on welfare, or has tried to deny additional benefits to people on welfare who have additional children without being challenged at the taxpayers' expense. Not one such State action has failed to be challenged by Legal Services Corporation in the courts. These lawsuits have been long and protracted. They have been funded by Federal taxpayer funds. So this amendment says, very simply, this: No Federal taxpayer funds shall be used to block the implementation of this welfare reform bill, any State welfare reform bill, or any regulation emanating from those laws. Now, let me make it clear. Legal Services Corporation can fund a lawsuit where a recipient argues that the rules or the law are not being fairly implemented with regard to their claim. But taxpayer funding from the Federal Government cannot be used to try to overturn the law or overturn the regulation. It is a very simple amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote for it. I reserve the remainder of my time. [[Page S 13641]]

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, first of all, current law allows any Legal Services Corporation grantee in America to file a lawsuit on behalf of any client, using taxpayers' funds, regardless of whether or not the individual is being treated fairly under the Federal law or the State law or Federal regulations or State regulations emanating from the law. But what my amendment says is that taxpayer funding cannot be used to try to block the implementation of laws that the American people are for in overwhelming numbers. It is time that we stop taxpayer funds from being used to circumvent the will of the people who pay those taxes. Second, the lamenting that we are not funding advocacy groups--if they want to advocate, God bless them, but let them advocate with their own money, not the taxpayers' money. Finally, State law and Federal law cannot be challenged with Federal taxpayer money, but that does not keep the ACLU from challenging it. It does not keep private groups from doing it. My amendment is very, very simple. It stops what is going on all over America. Federal tax dollars, through the Legal Services Corporation, are being used to try to block every effort to force able-bodied welfare recipients to go to work. Every effort to try to reform welfare has been challenged using taxpayer money. I want to bring that to an end. If people oppose welfare reform, let them run for public office or put up their own money to challenge it in the court. But do not take the money of the people who do the work, pay the taxes, and pull the wagon in America to try to stop the implementation of law, which they strongly support. I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, this is a very important principle. The number of positions that are affected by the amendment are relatively small, but let me explain why the principle is important. We are in the process, in this welfare reform bill, of doing something that we have not done in 40 years. Rather than power and decisionmaking authority residing Washington, we are sending it back to the States, counties, cities and to the people. We are, in fact, in this bill, eliminating a Federal program known as AFDC [aid to families with dependent children]. We will be debating, later, the elimination of Federal job training programs where the money for those programs will be given back to the States. We will allow each State to conduct job training in such a way that the State believes will be most successful within its borders. Here is the question. Given that we are eliminating Federal programs, what about the people who are employed by the Federal Government to run those programs? What happens to the jobs in AFDC when we eliminate AFDC? What happens to the jobs in these training programs when we eliminate the training programs? What I am proposing is a very modest amendment. I am sure it will be strongly opposed by people who believe that immortality in a temporal sense is defined as a Government program or a Government position. But what I am saying is this: If you eliminate a program, you cannot keep more than 25 percent of the people who work directly on that program even though they have nothing to do. Second, you have to take the overhead of the department that the program is part of and you have to reduce that overhead proportionately because that program no longer exists. I think we have a legitimate right to be concerned--when giving power back to the States and eliminating Federal programs--about all of these Government employees who were running the old programs remaining Government employees and undercutting what the States are doing. In any other city in America, this would be an amendment in which anybody who opposed it would be laughed out of the room. Unfortunately, this is Washington, DC. We are talking about Government positions. And what I am saying is simply this: If you eliminate a Government program, you have to eliminate at least 75 percent of the positions. I think it ought to be 100 percent. You also have to lower the overhead for that portion of the program by 75 percent. It is an eminently reasonable amendment. It may make too much sense to be given consideration in the U.S. Senate. We shall see. But I wanted to offer it. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GRAMM. I believe, Mr. President, the amendment has already been modified.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished Senator from Missouri.

Mr. GRAMM. How much time is left?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me remind my colleagues that we are eliminating this Federal program, that the money is going back to the States, and they are going to run the program. Yet, the Senator from Ohio says that a case can be made supporting the need for more employees in Washington, even once we have eliminated the program. There is nothing so immortal as a Government program. We celebrate here our giving back of funds to the States to run the program, and yet we are arguing that we have to preserve the Federal jobs in a program that no longer exists. No wonder the American people are outraged that Government grows like a cancer. My amendment is a very modest amendment. It says you have eliminated the program. Eliminate 75 percent of its jobs. It seems to me that we ought to eliminate 100 percent of them, but instead, I say keep 25 percent of the people in an agency that no longer carries out a function, a function that is now run by the State. I see this as a very modest amendment. We ought to be eliminating every one of these positions, and I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum until there is a sufficient second.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the Shelby amendment. What the Shelby amendment does is it tries to provide tax equity to people who adopt children and in the process, provide a home and environment that represents our only sure-fire, guaranteed way to break the poverty cycle--allowing people the opportunity to escape from poverty and use their God-given talents. One of the reasons I feel so strongly about not giving people more and more money to have more and more children on welfare is that I am convinced if we stopped giving people cash bonuses to have more children on welfare and adopt the Shelby amendment giving tax equity to people who adopt children on a par with people who are having them, then we have an opportunity to find a home for every child born in America. That can solve not only the welfare problem but many other problems in the country. I do not know how our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are going to vote on this amendment, but I would simply like to note this paradox. In the compromises that have taken place in the last 2 hours in an effort to pass this bill, an initial agreement has been made which will spend $4 billion on programs that in all probability will do virtually nothing to help break the poverty cycle and will do virtually nothing to guarantee that people see an improvement in their lives. However, by giving tax equity to people who adopt children--up to $5,000 in tax credits to cover the costs they incur in adoption--we can guarantee that people will be able to adopt more children, bringing them into their homes, giving them love, and improving the lives of those children. I think this is an important amendment, and I think if we can follow it up someday with an amendment to streamline the adoption process, making it easier for people to adopt children, we can make a dramatic difference. One of our colleague's wives was in Bangladesh--I ask for an additional minute.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAMM. As I look at the Shelby amendment, it reminds me of a statement made by Cindy McCain, Senator McCain's wife. When she was in Bangladesh, there was this baby girl who had been set aside to die because she had a cleft palate. Cindy McCain decided that she was going to bring that little girl back to the United States of America and adopt her. Her point was, I cannot solve the problems of every [[Page S 13587]] child in the world, but I can solve this child's problem. What the Shelby amendment does is let other people who want to solve this problem one child at a time, do it. So, I think, this is an important amendment. I hope it will be adopted, and I urge my colleagues to vote for it. I congratulate the distinguished Senator from Alabama. This provision was in our original welfare bill that Senator Shelby and other conservative Republicans and I put together. I think it is an important addition to this bill, and, quite frankly, of all the things we have talked about here, this is clearly welfare reform. I thank the Chair for its indulgence. Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, it was argued yesterday that no one could establish a relationship between giving people money to do something and then seeing them do it. In fact, the proponent of this argument stated that if you believe that people do more of something when you pay them to do it, then you must also believe in the tooth fairy. No more nonsensical statement was ever made on the floor of the U.S. Senate than that. One-third of all the babies born in America today are born out of wedlock. The largest single explanation of why that is the case is that we give larger and larger cash payments to people who have more and more babies on welfare. [[Page S 13564]] Yesterday, we lost on our effort to stop that suicidal national policy. Now we have an effort to strike the last remaining provision in this bill, a provision that says simply that if States are able, through their own reforms, to deal with the greatest welfare crisis we face, illegitimacy, that we will give them a bonus for their success. Now we have an amendment that says strike that bonus and eliminate the last remaining effort to deal with illegitimacy. It is very important that this amendment be defeated. I urge my colleagues to reject it.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Let me say this. I think we are preaching the oath too late. We now have a system where 40 million Americans are receiving some means-tested program broadly defined as welfare. We have a program that does a great deal of harm and that, if left in place, in my opinion will do far greater harm than it has done. In the mid-1960's, when the current approach to this problem really took hold with the Great Society, we were looking at something less than 10 percent of all babies born in America being born out of wedlock. Today, one out of every three babies born in America is born out of wedlock. So I think, quite frankly, that while the advice ``first do no harm'' is good advice when you do not know what you are doing, the point is we have in place a program that does a great deal of harm. And probably no part of that program is more destructive than the part of the program that provides cash bonuses to people who have children on welfare or children who qualify for welfare. Our dear colleague, Senator Domenici, in the closing remarks he made in debate on an earlier amendment, said if you believe that denying people more and more money to have more and more children on welfare is going to reduce the birth rate of people on welfare, you believe in the tooth fairy. Mr. President, let me say that no human behavior in the history of this planet is better documented than the principle that if you pay people to do something they are going to do it, and they are going to do more of it than if you did not pay them. If we know anything about the behavior of the human being, it is that human behavior is clearly affected by the environment in which the human operates, by the set of rewards and penalties that exist. And clearly, the rewards in the current welfare system are all bad from the point of view of producing behavior that we do not want. Let me just give you a few of them. Any 16-year-old girl in our bigger cities can escape from her mother, can get cash and voucher benefits equal to $14,000 of earnings a year, can get housing subsidies, food stamps, and AFDC by doing one thing--by getting pregnant. Does anybody believe that giving that child $14,000 worth of free benefits in return for getting pregnant is not creating behavior that would not exist in the absence of that money? Does anybody really believe that, if we did not give people more and more money to have more and more children on welfare, that people would be having the number of children that they are having? I do not believe it. I was having a discussion with my mother the other day on this subject, which I think is always good advice to someone who is engaged in public policy today. My mother's thesis on this subject was basically that the problem with welfare is that people today, young people, are not as proud as people were in her generation. I responded by trying to explain to my mother that I am not positive that is the case. I think the world faced by young people today is very different than the world my 82-year-old mother faced when she was growing up. I tried to explain to my mother that if we had the kind of welfare benefits we have today when she had two little children and was working in a cotton mill that she would have taken welfare. My mother said, ``I would not have taken it. I would starve to death before I would take it.'' I said, ``Well, mother. Everybody you would have known would have been taking it. There would have been no [[Page S 13512]] stigma in taking it. People would have made fun of you for not taking it.'' To which my mother responded, ``I would not take it, and if you ever say I would take it, I will go on television and denounce it.'' My mother is tough. Maybe she would not have taken it. But the point is that no logical person can doubt that the availability of these cash incentives to have babies, to have babies out of wedlock, is not impacting behavior. Am I claiming that it is the only incentive that is there? Am I claiming that by eliminating these cash payments that we would eliminate illegitimacy? No. But I do not think any rational person can argue that we would not have less of it if we did stop paying people for acting irresponsible. We had an earlier amendment that was adopted which killed the provision in this bill that I thought was very important. We had spent months working out a compromise that said we are not going to give people on welfare more and more money to have more and more children. I thought it was an important provision. Senator Domenici earlier offered an amendment which killed that provision, and basically preserved the status quo, a status quo where now one-third of all the children born in the country are born out of wedlock. I do not have any doubt based on that vote that Senator Faircloth's amendment is not going to be adopted. But I believe that this is a very important amendment. So my purpose in the remaining moments is twofold: First of all, I want to say to our dear colleague from North Carolina that no Member of the Senate has had a more profound impact on welfare reform than the junior Senator from North Carolina, Lauch Faircloth. Had it not been for his persistence and his leadership there would be no pay for performance provision in this bill and we would not have a mandatory work requirement where people who refuse to work and are able-bodied lose their check. Had it not been for his persistent leadership, we would still be, even under this bill, inviting people to come to America with their hand out to go on welfare rather than their sleeves being rolled up to go to work. Thanks to his leadership and his commitment, we did have a provision in the bill until today that denied additional cash payments to people who have more and more children on welfare. So I want to first thank him for his leadership. And I am convinced that ultimately we are going to reform welfare, and I share with Senator Faircloth the commitment that I do not want to just perform welfare because it costs $384 billion a year when you add up all the State and the Federal payments. I want to reform welfare because we are hurting the very people we are trying to help. The great paradox is that people who really oppose welfare reform, as the President does--and, despite all of his rhetoric, one thing is very, very clear; that is, Bill Clinton wants to preserve welfare as we know it. But one of the things that it is clear to me is that we have to redo this system because we are hurting the very people that we are trying to help. Our programs have driven fathers out of the household. They have made mothers dependent. They have denied people access to the American dream. They have changed people's behavior. Our social safety net has turned into a hammock. And it has changed the way people behave. As they have turned more and more toward government to take care of them, they have turned less and less to develop self-reliance. They have turned less and less to their family and to their faith, and I have no doubt that their life has been diminished. Those who are for dramatic reform in welfare stand on the high ground morally in this debate. Those who defend the status quo, in my opinion, are defending a system that may serve some political interest. But it does not serve the interest of the people in this country who are poor because it is a system that keeps them poor, it is a system that expands their numbers, it is a system that diminishes their lives, and it is a system that diminishes our great country. And I want to change it. The final point I want to make is this is a modest amendment that the Senator from North Carolina has proposed. What his amendment says is simply this: No Federal funds for cash welfare aid to unmarried mothers under the age of 18 with a State opt-out provision. What does that mean? What Senator Faircloth is saying is that, if his amendment is adopted, if a child 16 years old is having a baby or has had a baby, nothing in his amendment would prevent the State from giving her assistance through her own mother, nothing in this amendment would prohibit giving her assistance under adult supervision, and nothing in this amendment would prevent giving her food or shelter or clothing. But what the amendment would not do is to create a cash incentive for people to have babies on welfare. That is what the amendment does. In addition, if a State does not want to abide by the Faircloth amendment, and it wants to provide cash, the State legislature must pass a bill and the Governor of the State must sign it taking themselves out of the program. A lot of people oppose this because they know there are a lot of States where politicians might want to get out of the program but people do not want to vote to get out of the program. So this preserves State option. It simply requires that affirmative action by the State to be exempt. I want to repeat in closing that I am alarmed about a country, our country, where one out of every three babies in America is born out of wedlock. No great civilization has ever risen that was not built on strong families. No great civilization has ever survived the destruction of its families, and if fear we are not going to be the first. So I fully understand that this is an area where you could study it endlessly. And I generally agree with the Hippocratic principle: First, do not harm. But the point is we have already done harm. We have put in place a program that unless we change it is ultimately going to kill our Nation, and I wish to undo it. Given the harm that is being done by the current welfare system, it is time to venture some change. Finally, I totally and absolutely reject the thesis that there is no demonstration that people do more of something if you give them money to do it. All of recorded history makes it very clear that if you pay somebody to do something, they are going to do more of it than if you do not pay them. I just remind my colleagues that the first welfare reform measure in America was in Jamestown, and what happened is that Capt. John Smith had seen the colony break down as they had adopted a system, basically a socialistic system where people were given the fruits of society's labor based on an allocation rather than based on their effort. As far as I am aware, the first welfare reform principle in the history of America was when Capt. John Smith said those who do not work shall not eat. I believe those kinds of reforms have an effect, and the incredible point that seems to be missed by so many is that these kinds of reforms are humane reforms. People cannot be happy when they are kept dependent. There is something wrong in a free society when people are not providing their own way. The only real happiness that comes, the only real fulfillment that comes is from individual achievement. And if we want to unleash the energy and the ability which is hidden in so many millions of Americans who are trapped on this welfare system and unleash that talent and ability to serve them and to serve the country, we have got to reform this welfare system, and I feel very strongly that this is a very important amendment. A concluding point. I am very disappointed about the adoption of the Domenici amendment. It undoes a delicate bill that we had put together. I want to say to my colleagues, assuming that we do not mandate some new benefit which would be totally unacceptable and induce me to vote against this bill, I plan to vote for this bill on final passage. I intend to vote to take it to conference with the House. However, when we come back to the Senate with a bill, I am not going to vote for a welfare reform bill that does not deal with illegitimacy. We cannot deal with the welfare problem we face, we cannot change this destructive system unless we deal with illegitimacy. And so I am committed to the principle that when this bill comes back from conference, we have provisions which end cash incentives to people to have [[Page S 13513]] more and more children on welfare. I think that is essential. I wish to congratulate our colleague from North Carolina for his leadership on this amendment and on this bill. I am very proud to support it. I do not have any doubt about the fact that we are probably going to get about 25 votes, but I believe this is the right thing to do. And I am also confident that this century will not end before the Faircloth amendment will be the law of the land. I have no doubt about the fact that while Congress is perfectly content to let a rotten welfare system fester, the American people are not content. They are going to continue to demand that we make these changes. They are going to give us a Congress and a President who are committed to them, and when they do we are going to make these changes and some of us will remember Senator Faircloth's leadership. Hopefully he will be here providing it when the day comes that this amendment will be successful, and I am confident that it will. I congratulate him on his leadership. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me begin by responding to our dear and learned colleague from New York, who undoubtedly has spent more time and energy studying this problem than any other Member of the U.S. Senate. I would like to begin with his application of the Hippocratic oath to welfare reform.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. President, it is hard for me to take this argument about States rights seriously when Senator Domenici has another amendment, amendment 2573, that mandates how much States pay on welfare. So let us make it clear. This is not an issue about flexibility. This is not an issue about strings. This is an issue about reform. The Domenici amendment preserves the status quo. And what is the status quo? The status quo is that one out of every three babies born in America today is born out of wedlock. The status quo is if we continue to give people more and more money to have more and more children on welfare, by the end of this century illegitimacy will be the norm and not the exception in America. No great civilization has ever risen that was not built on strong families. No great civilization has ever survived the destruction of its families, and I fear the United States of America will not be the first. Under existing law, States can do exactly what Senator Domenici's amendment allows them to do. What his amendment will do is perpetuate a system which subsidizes illegitimacy, which gives cash bonuses to people who have more and more people on welfare. The compromise we have hammered out helps children. It provides vouchers. It provides them the ability to take care of them. But it does not provide cash incentives for people to have children that they cannot support. What a great paradox it is that while families across America are pulling the wagon, both husband and wife working every day to save enough money to have a baby, they are paying taxes to support programs like this one which is subsidizing people to have babies that they cannot support. I think if we are going to deal with welfare reform, if we are going to have a bill worthy of the name, we have to defeat this amendment. I do not know what is going to happen on this amendment. Obviously, I am concerned about it. It breaks the deal that we have negotiated. It basically eliminates the glue that held a compromise together. I am very concerned about the fate of welfare reform if this amendment is adopted. In the end, whether we have to do it in conference or whether it is not done, I am not going to support a bill that does not deal with illegitimacy. There is no way you can solve the welfare problem and not deal with illegitimacy. It is the basic cause of the problem, and I think we are running away from it with this amendment. I hope my colleagues will oppose it. This is a crisis in America. It is a crisis that has got to be dealt with. I think to assume that the problem is simply going to go away is a bad mistake. Then he opposes even a modest limitation on the use of Federal funds turned over to the States. My position is different. Do not tell the States how to spend their own money but set a few basic moral principles for the use of Federal funds. I believe that Federal funds should not subsidize illegitimacy. This amendment is a complete reversal of the agreement we reached on this bill. It is time we take our commitment seriously and defeat this amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. GRAMM

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 [[Page S 12690]] 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.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, is there any way that we could have this debate tonight and come back in the morning?

Mr. GRAMM. If you want to debate, you will. If you do not want to debate, you will not.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have 5 minutes to speak on welfare.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, Senator Dole has pulled down the welfare bill and, therefore, the amendments that I and others had prepared will not be offered today, tomorrow, or at any time during the remainder of the week. So I thought it was very important to outline what I see the issues to be and to make the point that some progress has been made, even though the bill was only on the floor for 2 days, with no formal amendments, other than a change that the leader himself sent to the desk and was approved. When we started this debate, there was a lot of common ground between Senator Dole's position and the position that I and other conservative Republicans have taken. But there were also some fundamental differences: First, I felt very strongly that we needed a binding work requirement which said, in no uncertain terms, that able-bodied men and women riding in the welfare wagon were going to be required to get out of the wagon and help the rest of us pull. I had concerns about the original Dole-Packwood bill that came out of committee because it did not contain a binding work requirement and because there was no enforcement mechanism to guarantee that people who refused to work would actually be dropped from the welfare rolls. I am very proud of the fact that yesterday Senator Dole decided, in what I viewed as a gesture toward consensus, to send a modification of his amendment to the desk to add the pay-for-performance provision that was part of both the House bill and the bill that I had proposed with 24 other Republican Senators. This modification simply says that welfare should operate like any other process in America: if you do not show up for work, you will not get paid. This work requirement was added, I think it was a change in the right direction, and I think that as a result we are closer to a consensus today than we were 2 days ago. I want to see this bill changed to deal with illegitimacy. Under the current program, the illegitimacy rate has risen from 5 percent in 1960 to almost 30 percent in 1990. Last year, roughly half of all the children born in the big cities in America and almost a third of all children born in the entire country were born out of wedlock. It is clear to me that a program which continues to give people more and more money to have more and more children while on welfare has got to be changed. I have agreed today, in talking to the majority leader, to sit down with him, to have our staffs sit down together, and to see if we can find an agreement to deal with illegitimacy. I think it is clearly necessary not just to pass a bill, but to change the welfare system in America. I feel very strongly that we should not continue to have immigrants coming to America, looking for a hand out rather than with their sleeves rolled up ready to go to work. I do not believe people ought to be able to come to America just to get welfare. We have room in America for people who want to come and work, for people who want to come here to realize their own American dream. [[Page S 11845]] We have children of immigrants in the U.S. Senate. Most of us are grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants. We want people to come to America to build their dream, to build our dream, but we ought to end this practice of letting people come to America and immediately go on welfare. Senator Dole has agreed today--in fact, our staffs at this moment are meeting--to try to see if we can find language in this area that we can agree on, both to settle this issue and to make a fundamental change in this bill. I think if we can do that, then we are making progress toward a consensus. I want a smaller Federal bureaucracy. If we are going to give AFDC to the States, if we are going to let States run this building block of the welfare system, it seems to me we should not be keeping 70 percent of the program's Government employees at the Federal level with nothing to run. What are these people going to do other than to get in the way of States that are trying to reform the system? In working with Senator Ashcroft, I have proposed that we give those Federal programs which are going to be block granted to the States no more than 10 percent of the Government positions they have now, so that they can monitor what the States are doing. Although I would rather have audits by independent firms, I cannot see any logic in giving AFDC, a program which we are eliminating at the Federal level, the ability to keep 70 percent of their Government employees in place. Is a Government job the only immortal thing in the temporal world? I would answer no, but Congress continually says yes. Finally, I would like to expand the number of programs that we are giving to the States. We will try to block grant food stamps and I believe that there will be a cross section of Senators voting together in favor of this proposal. The point is that although some progress has been made, we need to continue to work. In the past, we have reformed welfare many times, but we have never truly changed it. I want this bill to be different. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me begin by saying I always find it informative to listen to our distinguished colleague from New York. Nobody in this country, in the last quarter of a century, has had more reasonable things to say about this subject than he has. I feel very strongly about this issue, and I know that he feels just as strongly as I do. And, while we have very great differences on this issue, even among Republicans, I think everybody should know that in my mind, and I think in the mind of any reasonable person, everybody who is debating this issue is sincere. Everybody understands what profound consequences await the Nation in this area. In fact, yesterday, as the distinguished Senator from New York and I discussed this issue, the one thing we agreed on was that a continuation of the current trend means a profound change in our country and the loss of the America we know. I think, as we start this debate, it is important to begin it with this fact in mind. The Senator from New York and I are far apart as to what the remedies are in dealing with this problem, but we are in total agreement that a failure to deal with this problem means the end of America as we know it. It is from this premise that I want to start the debate today. In the last 30 years, if you take all the means-tested programs in America--that is programs where money is allocated, directly or indirectly, or is spent on behalf of people who are poor--if you take all those programs and add them up, you find that over the last 30 years, in fighting this war on poverty, as Lyndon Johnson deemed it to be in 1965, the American taxpayer has spent $5.4 trillion on programs aimed at helping poor people. Mr. President, nobody here, I believe, really knows what $1 trillion, or even $1 billion, is. I have a constituent from Dallas named Ross Perot who knows what $1 billion is. But I readily admit that I have a hard time fathoming what it means. But let me take a couple of cracks at what it means and why it is a very big number. No. 1, the newest estimate by the Heritage Foundation of the value of every building or plant in America, the whole physical capital of the United States of America, the greatest economy in the history of the world--if you add up the value of every building and improvement, every factory and all the tools of all the workers in America, it is roughly $5 trillion in value. So, one measure of the commitment of the American taxpayer to fight and win the war on poverty, is that in the last 30 years we have spent slightly more than the total value of all the buildings, all the plants, all the equipment and all the tools of all the workers in our country. The net physical wealth of the Nation is roughly equal to what we have expended over the last 30 years in our efforts to try to help people help themselves. A second figure which I think is equally revealing is that, if you simply look at the burden of the welfare program as it exists today-- not how much we spent in the last 30 years but the amount we are spending today--and you distribute that whole burden among all the families in America that file a Federal income tax return, that burden adds up to $3,357 per family filing a Federal income tax return last year. Most working Americans do not know what $1 billion is, but virtually every working family in America knows what $3,357 a year is, and that is what we are talking about in terms of our annual commitment, as compared to the number of families in America that filed an income tax return last year. The point I am trying to make here is no one can say the American people have not made a legitimate effort to deal with this problem. In fact no society in history has ever made a similar effort over such an extended period of time. Never in the history of the world has a society taken more away from the people who are pulling the wagon and given more to people riding in the wagon; and, as I will argue later, in doing so has made both groups worse off. If we look at what have been the fruits of this massive expenditure of money, I do not think anyone would find the results to be anything but disappointing. We have seen, under this program, the illegitimacy rate explode--from 5.3 percent in 1960 to almost a third today. Last year, in our big cities, about one-half of all the children born were born out of wedlock. And nationwide, almost one out of three children born in America was born out of wedlock. And we might debate what, under the current trend, the illegitimacy rate is going to be at the end of the century. Is it going to be 40 percent? Is it going to be 50? We can debate how that will break down across various identifiable groups in America. But nobody can dispute the fact that under the current system the trend in illegitimacy is up, and no one can argue that we have seen, from this massive and unprecedented expenditure of money, tangible results in terms of people becoming less dependent, nor in terms of people breaking the cycle of poverty. That is not to say that you can spend $5.4 trillion without helping somebody. But when you look at America I think it is very, very difficult, if not impossible, to argue that after spending $5.4 trillion on welfare programs over the last 30 years that America is better off today than it was when we started. I believe.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM. Let me finish my statement and I would be very happy to yield. I think that, by any definition, people are more dependent on Government today than they were in 1965. We have more people who are poor today than we had when we started. I think if you look at the quality of life in those areas where you have high concentrations of poor people, especially in our inner cities, by any definition of the quality of life, people are worse off today than they were when we started this program. The first point that I want to make is that this is not the kind of debate--and we have many debates on the floor of the Senate that I think would qualify under this heading--where we are talking about whether to undertake an activity; where there is real debate about whether or not the problem would get better more quickly if we left it alone. This is not a marginal kind of debate. I think there is a consensus--whether you are a moderate Member of the Senate or more conservative--that this is an issue where the future of America is on the line, that our house is literally on fire. And I would argue--and I think the evidence is convincing on this argument--that what we have done in the last 30 years has not only failed to put this fire out, but rather has made it burn even brighter. The time has finally come for a dramatic change in public policy. In a series of amendments today and for the next few days I, and others, will offer proposals that are aimed at dramatically changing the system. Some will argue that if we can do anything that is an improvement on the current system, we ought to do it. But I would like to remind my colleagues that we have reformed welfare on numerous occasions. In 1988, we had what was touted as a dramatic change in welfare. The Senator from New York today announced that there may be a glimmer of hope that positive results are being produced and, obviously, I hope that he is correct. But again, let us look back at what the world looked like in 1988 in terms of poverty, and let us look at what it looks like today. I think that when we look at the numbers we cannot help but be discouraged. Between 1988 and 1993, welfare spending in America has risen by roughly 50 percent. The poverty rate has risen from 13 percent of the population living in poverty in 1988 to 15.1 in 1993. So, in other words, as spending has risen by 50 percent, the percentage of the population living in poverty in America has actually gone up by almost 2 percent. During this 5-year period, from 1988 to [[Page S 11746]] 1993, 95,000 new bureaucrats have been added to the welfare system. So we reformed welfare in 1988. But we clearly did not make any dramatic changes. And while the Senator from New York may see some glimmer of hope, I think his hope is very, very difficult to see in these statistics. But the point is that these statistics represent a very small part of the cost of the failure of the American welfare system, because there is a human face behind each of these numbers--because not only have we spent record amounts of money, but we have made people more dependent and in the process we have changed behavior. I was talking to my mother the other day about welfare, something that anyone who wants to be a leader on this issue would be well advised to do. My mother made the point that the problem today with welfare is that young people do not have the same pride that she had when she was growing up. And I argued. ``Well, mother, I am not sure that is right. I am not sure that young people are so different today than they were when you were growing up. But I will tell you one thing that I know is different; the system is different.'' I tried to explain to my mother that if we had back then, when she was young, had two little children, and was working at the mill, if we had then the kind of welfare system we have now, she would have probably taken it. And my mother argued she would not have taken it. She said that she would have starved to death before she would have taken it. I said, ``Well, mother, you would have been better off taking welfare than you would have been working. Everybody you would have known would have been taking it. There would have been no stigma involved, and people would have made fun of you for not taking it.'' To which my mother responded by saying, ``I would not have taken it, and if you ever say I would have taken it, I will go on television and denounce you.'' Maybe my mother would not have taken it. But the point is that a lot of people have. We started out with the idea of helping people. We started out to build a social safety net. But what happened somewhere along the way, during these past 30 years, the social safety net instead became a hammock. We started to change people's behavior, which is not surprising because under the current system, generally, if a welfare mother takes a job she loses her welfare. If she marries somebody who has a job, she loses her welfare. But if she has more children, she gets more welfare. So not surprisingly in spending this massive amount of money, $5.4 trillion, we have not broken the cycle of poverty. We have not helped people produce independence. But what we clearly have done is changed the way people behave. The other day, in debating this issue, one of my colleagues said, ``We are not going to solve this problem until we find a way to change how people behave.'' I would argue, Mr. President, that we have found the way to change how people behave. It is our current welfare system. Not only have we made people more dependent, not only have we taken away their initiative and denied them access to the American dream, but we have affected their spirit and their pride in themselves. Because, as people have turned more and more to Government to take care of them, to fix their every mistake, they have turned away from self-reliance, turned away from their family, and turned away from their faith in themselves. How do we fix it? The Senator from New York says the plain truth is that we do not know. And I think that no one can definitively disagree with that statement. The question is, however, having traveled one road for 30 years--a road that is littered with the wreckage not only of the expenditure of $5.4 trillion but with the lives of people who were caught up in this whole crisis--is it not time for a dramatic change? Let me try to define the debate, if I may. And I know that any time you try to define your position relative to somebody else's, almost by the very nature of the debate, you are unfair. But let me, at least as I see it, try to define where we are. We have basically three proposals that are going to be discussed and voted on in the Senate. We have the Dole-Packwood bill, which is an effort to try to institute marginal change. First of all, it deals with only 13 percent of means tested programs, even if you do not count Medicaid. And even within the areas where it provides block grants, for example, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, despite all the talk of removing strings, in truth the strings are still present. I will just give you an example. According to the Dole-Packwood bill, if under the block grant of AFDC my State wants to require welfare recipients to wash windows on public buildings, but is currently paying State employees to wash these same windows, then they cannot use welfare workers because it would displace State employees. Mr. President, clearly, when you are looking at this kind of restriction, you are looking at a focus being put on the interest of someone other than the taxpayer. Let me run down other problems with the Dole-Packwood bill and how a group of some 24 Senators that I will be working with on this issue will try to deal with them. First of all, the Dole-Packwood bill fails to establish a real mandatory work requirement. There is clearly a consensus in the country on a mandatory work requirement, but right at the final stage of the bill's work requirement--when a decision is made whether or not to actually terminate somebody's welfare if they refuse to work--the Dole bill leaves the decision up to the States. The House, in contrast, has a real pay-for-performance provision that basically says if somebody shows up to work half time, they get half their welfare benefit; if they do not show up, they get none. I do not believe the District of Columbia will terminate welfare benefits for people who refuse to work and I am not sure what other States will do. I do know that there are some people who say, well, let us just turn this whole thing over to the States. I, too, want to give the States a massive expansion in independence, but there is an absolute consensus in America that able-bodied men and women riding in the welfare wagon should get out of the wagon and help the rest of us pull. We will offer an amendment later today, or sometime this week when we have the opportunity, that would put a pay-for-performance provision in the bill. Members of the Senate can vote either for or against having a real pay-for-performance provision which will simply say that whether or not somebody gets AFDC--and our goal will be to expand this provision to food stamps and housing subsidies--depends on their willingness to work. If people refuse to work, we ought to cut off their benefits. That is how it works in America. That is how it works in the real world, where families and businesses operate every day; if you do not show up for work, you do not get paid. So that is the first change we will institute, and it is a fundamental change. I believe that unless we are willing to have a real mandatory work requirement, not only are we not fulfilling the commitment that Republicans made in the election, I think we are not doing what has to be done in order to deal with this problem. Let me remind my colleagues that we claimed in 1988 that we had a work requirement, but what happened was, when it finally went into effect, there was an outright exemption for 57 percent of the people receiving welfare. When you finally get down to the bottom line, less than 7 percent of the people ever complied with the work requirement. I want everybody in America who is on welfare to understand that able- bodied men and women are expected to work, and if they do not work, they are going to lose their benefits. But the most serious problem with the bill before us is that it does not deal with illegitimacy. If there is one underlying problem in American welfare today, if there is one self-perpetuating quality to poverty, it is the explosion of the illegitimacy rate. This is not an easy problem to deal with, and the proposal that I and others will make is not a proposal that is easy to accept. What we are going to propose is that we stop giving people more and more money to have more and more children while on welfare. [[Page S 11747]] A discussion occurred earlier in which someone pointed out that Western Europe has the same illegitimacy problems we have. I would argue that it largely has the same welfare program we have. We have tried for 30 years with a system that provides monetary reward for having more and more children on welfare. I believe the time has come to terminate that monetary reward. I think the time has come to say to people on welfare that we are not going to give you more and more money to have more and more children while on welfare. This is a tough decision to make, but I believe that without this change, we are not going to fundamentally change the poverty problem in America. I am very proud of the fact that the House made the change, and they made it in two important ways. No. 1, they stopped giving direct cash payment to children who have children. The House bill ends the absurd system which allows a 16-year-old to escape her mother and her family by simply having a child; at which point she qualifies for AFDC, food stamps, and housing subsidies, and can immediately qualify for enough benefits to leave her family. I believe that the current policy basically represents a national policy of suicide. It is one that has to be changed. We will offer two amendments. One will deal with teenage mothers, and the other will deal with a provision whereby we will deny additional cash payments to people on welfare who have more and more children. We have had on occasion debate about how many children people on AFDC have, but I think the facts are pretty clear. First, people on AFDC have children at a younger age than do people in the population as a whole. And on average, if you look at the age groups roughly through age 34, the fertility rate among people who are receiving a financial reward for having children is about 25 percent higher than those who are not. How outrageous is our current policy where we have working families-- families that are saving money and delaying having children they want-- paying taxes to encourage and even reward other people to have more children while on welfare. I think clearly this policy has to be changed. The House bill has a bonus for those States that reduce the illegitimacy rate through their programs. It also has a provision--and we will add and strengthen that provision--to see that nothing we do encourages States to promote abortion in order to try to qualify for these bonuses. But I believe, and many people in America believe, that the solution to the poverty problem lies in trying to deal with illegitimacy. I also believe we need to promote marriage. I believe there are only two things that can prevent or eliminate poverty: work and family. No great civilization has ever risen that was not built on strong families. No great civilization has ever survived the destruction of its families, and I am fearful that America will not be the first. We need some clear incentives for the formation of strong families. I would like to eliminate the marriage penalty for moderate- and low- income families. Under the current system, if two working people fall in love and get married, they pay a higher tax rate than they would pay if they had stayed single. Clearly that cannot be good public policy. I want, as we promised in the Contract With America, to have a tax credit for families that adopt children, something we desperately want to promote. I would like to have favorable tax treatment for families that take care of parents in their own home. We are trying to figure out now how to deal with these issues in a bill that is not a revenue bill from the House. And that is something that we are working on. But I think it is fundamentally important that in the last 30 years we have tried everything to deal with welfare except work and family. And I think if we are going to solve this problem, we are going to have to make that change. I believe that the paternity provision in the Dole bill is a weak provision. It basically requires the unwed mother to cooperate in trying to identify the father, whereas the House language is very, very strong so that except in very extreme circumstances, if the mother does not identify the father, she does not get the benefits. I believe that is a change that has got to be made. Probably the first amendment that we will offer will have to do with people coming to America to get welfare. I think most Americans are shocked to find that someone can come to America today and qualify for welfare tomorrow. I think we have room in America for people who want to come and work. I am not in favor of tearing down the Statue of Liberty. New Americans are often the best Americans. They bring new vision and new energy. And we have got room in America for people who want to come and work. But people ought to come to America with their sleeves rolled up, not with their hand out. We do not have room in America for people who want to come in here and live off the fruits of someone else's labor. I want to make it clear that our amendment is going to be prospective. So what we are going to say is, as of the adoption date of this bill, from that day forward, anybody who comes to America comes here understanding that they cannot immediately qualify for welfare. Now, if they come here, and are productive members of society, and if in 5 years they meet the citizenship requirement, once they become citizens, obviously, under the Constitution they have the same rights as anybody else. And that is how it should be. But I do not believe that we ought to continue to provide incentives for people to come to America to look for welfare. I want to see us block grant more programs. I think it is important that we vote on block grants for food stamps. I would also like to vote on block grants for housing subsidies. I would like to see us give the entire welfare program back to the States and set the States free to come up with a tailored program that will fit their individual needs. A final major point in the bill which I think just defies logic is that, while we eliminate AFDC as a Federal program and give the money back to the States, the bill will eliminate only 30 percent of the AFDC positions in the Federal bureaucracy. In other words, in AFDC and in those training programs that will be block granted under the Dole bill, 70 percent of the Federal bureaucrats that are currently working for those programs which we are going to be eliminated at the Federal level will stay on the Federal payroll. I believe that we need to eliminate those Federal bureaucracies when we eliminate the programs. I mean, is the only thing in life that is immortal a Government job or a Government position? It seems to me that it is impossible to justify keeping 70 percent of the bureaucrats that are running a program in place when we are going to eliminate the program. Now, we are working, we hope, to negotiate a compromise where you might keep 10 percent of the people to help monitor the program. I would prefer to do that through a contract with some private accounting firm. But there is no way that I can be supportive of a bill in which we eliminate a program but we keep 70 percent of the people who were running it. In short, the Dole bill does not live up to the commitments that Republicans made in the election. It will not solve the problem. It does not have a binding, mandatory work requirement. It does not deal with illegitimacy, and it continues to provide the resources to give people more and more money to have more and more children while on welfare. It continues to invite people to come to America, not with their sleeves rolled up but with their hand out in order to get welfare. And for even the programs it eliminates, it keeps 70 percent of the Federal bureaucrats in place with no other job, it seems to me, other than to interfere with the State's ability to truly reform the program. The choice we must make, is to dramatically strengthen the Dole bill. With all due respect to my Democratic colleagues--and I have no doubt as to the sincerity of their position--when you get down to the bottom line, their position is basically that we can still make this thing work, that after spending $5.4 trillion if we could just spend more money, if we could just start a new entitlement we can fix the current system. They are going to propose, it is my understanding, that we [[Page S 11748]] start a brandnew entitlement to give child care to welfare recipients. This will be a massive and expensive entitlement. But basically their argument is--not that they are going to make it, but when you get down to the bottom line--is that what is lacking in the welfare system is a greater commitment, that if we simply had more benefits, if we simply had more money, that we could make this whole thing work. I believe the American people passed that view 15 or 20 miles back down the road. The tragedy, it seems to me, in this debate in the Senate is that the American people are far beyond us in terms of the proposals that they are ready to accept. The American people are ready to dramatically change welfare. The American people understand that our house is on fire, and they are willing to put the fire out. They are willing to make dramatic change. I have no doubt that if the amendments that I and others will offer could be voted on by the American people, if you took the three bills that in essence we are going to be debating in amendment form, and you reduced them down to an agreed-upon, two-sheet summary of each, and put them on every kitchen table in America, I do not have any doubt about the fact that 80 or 90 percent of the people in America who do the work, pay the taxes and pull the wagon would be in favor of the changes that will be proposed by those of us who believe that the Dole bill is not strong enough. This is not an issue where cutting a deal in Washington, DC, is going to solve our problems. We need, on this issue, to stand up and fight for a change because the future of America is on the line and we are going to lose our country as we know it if we do not make the necessary changes. Finally, there are a lot of people who have worked in trying to put together an alternative that reflects the will of the American people. But there are two people that I want to talk about before closing. One is John Ashcroft, our new colleague from Missouri, a former Governor, who understands the functioning of welfare in the States, who probably has as much practical experience as any Member in the Senate with welfare, who certainly has administered a major welfare program more recently than any other Member of the Senate. I think his contributions, in terms of wanting to change the system where we have the Treasury allocate the funds to the States and where the Federal Government gets out of the way and where we eliminate the Federal bureaucracy, are vitally important. I intend to follow his leadership on this issue, and I am very hopeful that the amendments he will offer will be adopted. Finally, our relatively new colleague, Lauch Faircloth, has probably been more courageous on this issue than anybody else. It is often easy in party meetings, regardless of which party, when people are trying to talk about supporting a bill to simply nod and hold your tongue. I think the willingness of Lauch Faircloth to stand up and say no, especially on this issue of illegitimacy, has been vitally important. I think it has awakened conservative Republicans to the fact that this is something that is worth fighting for. I think if we pass a good bill, and I am hopeful we will, and when the dust settles--and I do not know when that is going to be--when we finally enact a bill, that we will have strengthened the bill's provisions on illegitimacy, we will have strengthened its provisions on work, and we will have strengthened its provisions in terms of denying benefits to people who come to America and get welfare. I think in the end, probably none of our colleagues will be due more credit for making that happen than Lauch Faircloth. So we will have a series of amendments. I am hopeful we reduce the number, though I have to confess, as of right now, we have about a dozen. Some of them will be very controversial, such as the illegitimacy reduction amendments. Some of them, I hope, will be accepted. I think we will see a split. Members on both sides of the aisle will vote for and against some of these amendments, but I think we have an opportunity to make history. I think we have an opportunity to write a welfare reform bill that will live up to its name. What we really ought to be debating is not simply reforming welfare but replacing it. I think the amendments that we will be offering represent a major step in that direction. I want to thank my colleagues who have worked on this effort, and I yield the floor. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I think maybe it is important to go back and talk about what the amendment is trying to do, since, obviously, we have criticisms of it. The Senator from Oklahoma has tried to fix it, but those who criticize it and object to it will not permit him to fix it. So I think people may have forgotten in all this what it is we are talking about. Let me go back and try very simply to define the issue. The Federal Government pays on average 72 percent of the health care benefits of all the employees of the Federal Government. We have had a longstanding consensus in America that no matter where people stood on the issue of abortion--and obviously there are great differences in America; there are great differences in the Senate--that since many Americans felt very strongly in opposition to abortion on demand, and that since people do not pay taxes voluntarily in America, that we ought not to take their tax money to pay for abortion services in areas like insurance premiums for Federal employees. This is not a radical idea. This was the law of the land for a decade prior to Bill Clinton becoming President. When Bill Clinton became President, that balance was overturned, and in 1993, for the first time in a decade, we took the taxpayers' money and used it to fund abortion on demand by paying for insurance premiums to fund abortion services. What the House did in their bill is they went back and said that people can do whatever they want to do. People can spend their own money on abortions if they choose to, but they cannot take the Federal taxpayers' money--which after all, is collected by the Internal Revenue Service through the force of law from taxpayers who strongly oppose abortion--and use it to pay for abortion on demand. That is what the House did. What the Senator from Oklahoma is trying to do is simply to go back to the consensus that existed for the decade prior to Bill Clinton becoming President, which simply says: Nothing in this amendment has anything to do with the right of a woman to have an abortion, but what it has everything to do with is the denial of taxpayer dollars to fund that abortion, except under a very stringent circumstance: The life of the mother being in danger. The issue here is not the right of a person to have an abortion, it is whether or not the Government should use its power of coercion to collect money from taxpayers to pay for it. I believe the American people's answer to that question is ``no.'' That is why we need to maintain the House-passed language, and I urge my colleagues to vote to do so.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I want to commend the efforts of the people of northeast Texas and southwest Arkansas for the excellent job they did making the case to save Red River Army Depot. As you know, in each of the last three base closure rounds, the Defense Department recommendations have been approved by the Base Closure Commission 85 percent of the time. The fact that Red River Army Depot overcame those odds is a testament to the dedicated efforts of everyone in the community, and particularly those members of the Red River Defense Committee: Deldon Brewer, Judge James Carlow, Linda Crawford, Dr. Phillip Duvall, Hubert Easley, Bob Embrey, John Henson, Dr. K.C. Hillis, Edward Holly, Bill Hubbard, Hoyt Johnson, R.E. ``Swede'' Lee, Dennis Lewis, John ``Wimpy'' McCoy, Fred Milton, Robert Mountz, Dee Reese, Eldridge Robertson, Don Ruggels, George Shackelford, Horace Shipp, James Stokes, Scotty Taylor, and Steve Wiggs. Even in a community as unified, dedicated, and active as theirs, these individual efforts stood out. Mr. President, the Red River Defense Committee saved Red River because they had the facts on their side and they worked together as a team. Each committee member volunteered countless hours to work on the Red River briefing, often traveling to Washington to gather information or meet with the Base Closure Commission. They organized massive public demonstrations of support, raised money, and took precious time away from their families and jobs to dedicate themselves to saving the depot. On this Saturday, August 5, 1995, they, their families, and as many citizens as can fit in the Four States Fair Entertainment Center will celebrate their well-deserved victory. As they do, I would once again like to offer my congratulations on a job well done.