Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, this amendment says that if Senator Domenici is wrong, and there are more than de minimis costs in expanding this coverage, and those costs exceed 1 percent, then the purchaser of that policy would be exempt. I think this is a good stopgap measure. If the Senator is right and this coverage can be provided for one-sixth of 1 percent, then it will be provided. If it raises the cost of the policy more than 1 percent, the purchaser of the policy would be exempt. I think it does improve the underlying amendment, and I am grateful the Senator has accepted it. Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GRAMM. Sure. Finish the amendment.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I do understand. I grew up in a household with someone who had mental illness. I grew up in a household where nobody had health insurance. We did not have health insurance for physical or mental ailments. But the point is, if you are going to mandate coverage, then you will end up with more people who have no health insurance, and you are going to have more people without jobs. The point is that under this amendment you lose your right to choose. To keep a policy that has limited mental health coverage, you either have to take no mental health coverage or take coverage equal to that set for physical illness coverage. The Brown amendment gives you choice. It seems to me that is what we want. My problem here is not that I do not understand. My problem is that I do understand. My problem is that I do understand what this does economically. I do understand that this takes away from people the right to choose. That is why I am opposed to it. There certainly is no politics in opposing this amendment. We should all be for giving everybody everything. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people have to choose. When we choose for them, they not only have less freedom, they do not get to choose to spend their money as they would choose to spend it. I believe families know better than we do. Even though our intentions may be wonderful and even though we may wish everybody had mental health coverage, families have to make hard choices when they have to pay. Businesses have to make hard choices. All I am saying is let them choose. If you want to make insurance companies provide the coverage, do not make people buy it. Have it available. Let them look at the cost. If it costs one-sixth of 1 percent, they will buy it if they want it. I would certainly buy it at that cost. My fear is we are going to find out later this is a very costly add- on, and we are going to price people out of the health insurance they have now, and they are going to end up with both physical and mental ailments, and they will not be covered for either.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask the Senator on one point to allow me to respond.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, every Member of the Senate voted for the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill. I stood on the floor and made it very clear that by moving toward community rating, we were driving up health insurance costs. What I wanted was medical savings accounts as a method to promote competition and empower the consumer to make rational choices. Like most bills, it represented a tradeoff: an expansion of freedom in one area, a reduction of it in another. I see no expansion of freedom here. No. 2. If this provision really costs one-sixth of 1 percent, why isn't it a matter of course in insurance policies? If this provision is so cheap and so good, why is it not provided? I will offer another amendment saying that if, under this provision, the cost of insurance rises more than 1 percent that this provision will be void, and we will see if that will be supported. Everyone who has ever argued that we should diminish freedom to promote a political objective has said that the political objective is big and the diminution of freedom is small. The point remains and is irrefutable that under this amendment, we are going to make you buy coverage that you may not want. We are going to make employers provide coverage that they may not be able to pay for unless they drop mental health coverage altogether. I believe that this is clearly a step in the wrong direction. Obviously, any of us can stand up and talk about things that any family would like to have. Wouldn't any family in America like to have comprehensive mental health care when a 17-year-old child in college comes down with severe depression? Obviously, they would. But there are also a lot of families who would like to have a 17-year-old in college. There are a lot of people who would like to have better jobs than they have. The point is, life is about choices. Life is about choices that we have to make in a free society. Senator Brown says that we can require insurance companies to offer the policy. But the Domenici amendment says you also have to buy the policy. You have to buy this coverage whether or not you want it, whether or not you can afford it, and whether or not it threatens your job or your company. Why? Because we, the Congress, in our infinite wisdom, have decided that this is something you need to have. It seems to me, if there was just one clear message in the last election, it was stop making decisions for us in Washington, let us make decisions for ourselves. If this policy really cost one-sixth of 1 percent, then let people choose to buy it, let companies decide to offer it. I do not believe it will cost one-sixth of 1 percent. I believe we are talking about a very expensive rider to insurance policies. I think that this rider is going to drive up the cost of health insurance and, in effect, deny people who are having trouble buying insurance the ability to cover themselves or their child should he or she fall down, break an arm, or, God forbid, be in an accident. We are going to jeopardize their ability to have any health insurance at all. Further, we are going to jeopardize their ability to have a job, and are going to induce many companies to drop health coverage altogether. Soon people will find out that if they have a child that has a mental problem, they will not even have $50,000 of coverage, let alone coverage equal to the rest of their policy. The point is this, if this is so cheap, if this is so irrelevant from the point of view of cost, why not let people choose it on their own? Or better yet, why not have the insurance company be required to provide it and then let people decide if they want it based on their analysis of cost and benefits? Or are they so foolish, are the American people so naive, so unaware of their own needs and their own wants that they must have us tell them what they need? I do not think so. It seems to me that the Brown amendment has the saving grace of letting people choose. You force the insurance companies to offer this coverage whether they want to offer it or not, but at least you let people decide if they want it. I cannot understand, for the life of me, why people are opposed to this. If really this coverage costs one-sixth of 1 percent, we would all want it; we would all choose it. The only reason you would not let people choose it on their own is if you do not believe that one-sixth of one percent number, or you believe that people would not choose it. The point is, freedom is the right to make wrong decisions as well as to make right decisions. I simply go back to a fundamental point which, in my opinion, despite all the wonderful speeches you can give about this--Bismarck once said, ``Never does a socialist stand on stronger ground than when he argues for the best principles of health.'' Who can stand and argue against somebody having coverage for a physical or mental ailment? No one can. We all want it. We wish we could magically make it happen. But we should not make it magically happen by mandating that people have it, by forcing people to pay for it whether they want to or not, without knowing what it costs, without knowing the ramifications of this, all on an appropriations bill at 7:30 p.m. at night in the month that we are going to adjourn the Senate. I think that this amendment violates everything that many of us claim that we stand for. I do not doubt the good intentions, nor have I ever doubted the good intentions, of the Senator who is offering this amendment. But this is bad public policy. It flies in the face of everything the 1994 election said because it denies people the right to choose. If we want to preserve this right to choose, not for the insurance companies, but for the consumer, then it is critical that the Brown amendment be adopted. I yield the floor. Mr. BROWN addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. I want time to respond, or I can suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. I ask the Senator to withhold so that I might respond.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, what we have before us is a very bad amendment with very good intentions. What this amendment in essence is saying is that we in the Senate know better than employers and workers what kind of health insurance coverage they need. This amendment overrides the decision making of those workers who are affected by this amendment, and a very large portion of the population of the country will be affected. We are going to say to them that we know better. You may think that you want different limits for traditional physical health insurance than mental health coverage, but we know better than you and are going to make you buy the coverage with increased mental health limits. The incredible paradox is that the only way you can escape this is to drop mental health coverage altogether. This is an unfunded mandate. If we had a proposal before us tonight to raise taxes to provide this benefit, I doubt it would get 30 votes. But what we have is a proposal tonight where ``Big Brother'' Congress, know-it-all Congress, perfect-insight Congress, is going to say that even if you are a young worker and are having trouble buying health insurance and remaining competitive in the job market, we are going to force you to balloon your mental health coverage, as commendable as that might be. How wonderful it would be if everybody in America could afford this coverage. But what we are saying is, if you have any mental coverage in your plan, we are going to make you pay for a coverage limit up to the amount you have for traditional physical ailments. In the process we are going to drive up the cost of health insurance. We are going to reduce the choices that people have. The Senator from Colorado is saying if you want to mandate that insurance companies offer the coverage, then do it, but do not make people buy it if they do not want it. I would like to remind my colleagues--none of whom are having difficulty buying health insurance--that even though this may sound great from our point of view, the problem with private health insurance is young working couples are having trouble paying for the health insurance they have. And, to the extent that this bill drives up the cost of hiring people, it will cost people their jobs, it will force companies who cannot afford to provide this benefit to eliminate all mental health coverage, and it will force working families to do without, because every penny that goes towards health insurance comes right out of the pocket of the worker. Every economic study done, including studies by the administration, count fringe benefits as part of the wage package. What we are doing to young couples who are trying to make ends meet, who want health insurance in case Johnny falls down the steps, is saying that you are going to have to pay for this extensive mental health coverage whether you want it or not. This amendment says that Congress supposedly knows what is better for you than you yourself do--it assumes that Congress is capable of making better decisions. I totally and absolutely reject this. We adopted an amendment similar to this, but we adopted it when the majority leader, Senator Dole, made it clear that we were never going to see it emerge from conference--yet we ended up in conference with serious negotiations about really doing this. I, frankly, think it is outrageous that, on an appropriations bill, we are getting ready to mandate that working people and businesses provide a benefit, whether they want it or not; that they pay for it, whether they want it or not; and we are doing exactly what the American people are continually outraged about: injecting our value judgments over theirs. We are saying that we know better than you know--that you really need this expanded mental health coverage, even if you do not want it and even if you can not afford it. The point is, mental health care may be a wonderful thing. If we could snap our fingers and have everybody in America covered, it would be great. The truth, however, is that we cannot. This is expensive coverage. It is not an accident that private health insurance policies normally have differentials. In fact, in many cases, people do not have mental health coverage. We have not had a tremendous amount of experience with mental health coverage under a third party payment system, where the insurance company is paying for it. I know we can get into a lengthy debate about experience of various States. I have seen estimates as high as 15- percent increase, if you force people to pay for mental care for alcohol and drug rehabilitation. I do not know how to pull that apart. But the point is, whatever the costs, how dare we, in the freest society in the history of the world, attempt to play God by telling people what kind of health insurance they must have. I think the amendment that has been offered by the Senator from New Mexico is perfectly reasonable--more than reasonable. It simply says to insurance companies: You do not really live in a free society, you can not decide what product you want to sell, instead we are going to mandate that you sell this policy. Indeed, we are going to use the police power of the State to make you sell this policy. But, at least the Senator from Colorado says: We are not going to force young working couples, whose jobs might be threatened, whose ability to afford physical health insurance might be threatened--we are not going to make them buy it. It seems to me that is the issue. In terms of somehow relating this to medical savings accounts, that is the most contorted logic I have ever heard in my life. The point of medical savings accounts is that, under the current tax law, if you buy low-deductible insurance it is tax free. But if you buy high-deductible insurance and you put the difference in a savings account, then you have to pay taxes on that difference. In essence, we are making people, through the Tax Code, buy low-deductible insurance. We are putting people in a position where, when they are buying health care, it is like going to the grocery store and having a grocery insurance policy, where 95 percent of what you put in your grocery basket is going to be paid for by grocery insurance. Needless to say, if you had such a policy, you would eat differently, and so would your dog--this is part of the problem. What medical savings accounts do is expand choices. What the Domenici amendment does is limits choices. What gives us the right to say that people should be forced to buy health insurance that provides coverage which they otherwise would not choose to buy? Who are we to say that we have made this value judgment, that mental health care and physical health care are equal? Furthermore, who are we to say that if you have a policy which has a certain limit on physical care, and if you have any element of mental care in that policy, you are going to be forced to have the same limits on mental health care as well? Let me tell you what this amendment would do. This amendment would drive up the cost of health insurance, it would drive up payroll costs, it would increase the cost of employing workers, and, therefore, people would lose their jobs. Some courageous Members were willing to stand up and be counted upon on the issue of the minimum wage. How is this issue any different? How is this at all different? The plain truth is, this is not different. What this amendment would do is impose an unfunded mandate on workers and businesses. This will drive up unemployment. It will limit freedom. It will drive up the cost of health care. It will reduce the number of people who are covered by health insurance. And, finally, in the most perverted provision of this amendment, it will induce people to drop mental health coverage rather than face these expanded limits. So, I know we have danced around this issue before. I know that, in a form people thought would go to conference and die there, we have voted on this before. I was proud to vote against it then and I am going to be proud to vote against it now. I think the Brown amendment is an amendment that makes the underlying amendment dramatically better. Because what the Brown amendment says, in its simplest form, is people have to offer this coverage for sale, but you do not have to buy it. If you believe in freedom, if you believe in the right of people to choose you will vote for the Brown amendment. I would remind my colleagues who talked about lack of choice--there is a choice. If you do not like the health insurance your employer is providing, you do have an option. We do not have indentured labor in this country. We do not allow the enforcement of indentured labor contracts. People have a right to change jobs, and in fact people change jobs every day because of health insurance, because they want it and they want to expand their freedom. This is an amendment that limits freedom. This is an amendment that is an unfunded mandate of the worst sort. This is an amendment which has the Congress choosing for consumers, choosing for their employers, and I think it is absolutely wrong. I strongly oppose the underlying amendment and I strongly support the Brown amendment, which simply tries to preserve consumer choice. I would think that the authors of the underlying amendment would accept the Brown amendment because all the Brown amendment says is that, while the insurance coverage has to be offered, if the consumer does not want it, cannot afford it, feels it threatens his or her job, or if it threatens the viability of the company, you do not have to buy it. You either believe in freedom or you do not. If you believe in freedom, you are not for the Domenici amendment. If you believe in freedom, you are for the Brown amendment. Those are strong words but they are words that exactly fit the case before us. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. I will listen.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, how much time do we have remaining?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me commend my colleague from Texas for an excellent statement. We have debated this issue with our dear friend from Arkansas on many occasions. I feel confident that the outcome of the vote today will be the same as it has been on the many previous occasions that we have voted on this matter. And since my colleague from Texas has done such a great job of focusing in on the space station, let me take a little bit bigger picture and try to develop that. In 1965, we spent 5.7 percent of the Federal budget on nondefense research and development. In 1965, we invested 5.7 percent of the Federal budget in new science, new technology, new know-how to plant the seeds to generate jobs in the future. Today, under the budget submitted by the President, including the funding level that we have for the space station, we are spending 1.9 percent of the Federal budget on nondefense research and development. From 1965 until today, our investment in science and technology in the future has declined from 5.7 cents out of every dollar we spend in the Federal budget down to 1.9 cents out of every dollar we spend in the Federal budget. From 1965 to 1997, we have had an explosion in Federal spending, and yet in the midst of this explosion in Federal spending, we have increased spending not as an investment in the future, not as an investment in the next generation, not as an investment in science and technology, but, by and large, we have spent our money on social programs. And in the process, our Government has become the largest consuming institution in our society and one of the smallest investing institutions in our society as a percentage of the budget. In 1965 we were plowing back 5.7 cents out of every budget dollar into investments in science, technology, the future, investing in the next generation of Americans. We have seen that fall progressively down to the point in this budget where we are investing only 1.9 percent of our Federal budget in science, technology and the future. We are investing increasingly in the next election by spending money on social programs, and we are not investing in the next generation by investing in science and technology and the future. If you look at the Bumpers amendment, what it says is: Prohibit funding for the space station except for program termination costs. It in no way lowers the annual spending caps. It in no way says these savings have to be applied to deficit reduction. So as we all know, since we are operating under spending caps, every penny that would supposedly be saved, if we kill the space station, would end up being spent in other areas of the Federal budget. If we did this, if we kill the space station, we would be going further in taking money away from investments in the future, in the science and technology on which jobs in the future will be based and we would basically be converting that money into consumption programs where we would be investing in social programs and investing in the next election and not the next generation. This would be a tragic mistake. I am confident we are not going to do it today. Our investment in science and technology is already too low. I would like to have a 5- year program to double investment in science and technology instead of cutting it as the Senator from Arkansas proposes. No nation in history has benefited so much from science and technology as the United States of America. In this century we have been the principal contributor of all nations in the world to science and technology. And we have built a technological base that we have used better than any other country in the world. Our global leadership is threatened because we are not making the investments that we once made in pure science and technology. No other institution in our society is capable of building the space station. If we do not make this investment, we are again saying we are going to take money out of investment in the future and we are going to invest it in social programs today. That would be a mistake. I urge my colleagues to reject the Bumpers amendment as we have on 14 previous occasions. We have already cut the space station. We have refocused it. We have broadened the participation. We have taken on the Russians as partners. We have spread the cost of the program. We have made international commitments. We have saved money by paring back on the program. Now is the time to move ahead and build the space station. This is not the time to cut spending for the space station to free up funds to go into social programs. Let us invest in the next generation and not the next election by defeating the Bumpers amendment. I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I thank the Senator.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about drug use. You may recall that many people derided or made fun of Nancy Reagan's ``just say no'' approach to the use of illegal drugs. But I think it is interesting that for 11 years in a row during the Reagan-Bush era drug use among our children declined. Just saying no was a policy that worked. It seems now that we are not saying no enough in Washington and our children are not saying no enough in our junior high schools. If we look at the record on drug use, it is a frightening sight as to what is happening. Overall drug use has more than doubled in the last 4 years. Drug use among teenagers is up 105 percent in the last 4 years. The use of marijuana among teenagers has risen 141 percent. Cocaine usage among teenagers in the last 2 years has gone up by 160 percent. Today 1 out of every 10 children in America between the ages of 12-- that is the sixth grade--and 17 now are using drugs at least once a month. How did Washington contribute to this tragedy that is occurring in every junior high school in America? I think it started when President Clinton took office and, in his first days, cut the drug czar's office by 83 percent. President Clinton cut drug interdiction spending 25 percent below the level carried in the last Bush budget. Between 1992 and 1995, 227 positions at DEA were eliminated. Drug prosecutions in 1993 and 1994 declined by 12 percent, and the average sentence for selling marijuana declined by 13 percent from 1992 to 1995. I think if we are serious about this problem that we need to end the debate that we have been engaged in with the administration for the last 4 years where the President is trying to eliminate mandatory minimum prison sentences for hoodlums who are selling drugs at junior high schools, and we need to enact reforms that the Senate has adopted numerous times, and yet which has not yet become the law of the land. I have proposed 10 years in prison without parole for selling drugs to a minor or involving a minor in drug trafficking, so every hoodlum in America, when they are thinking about selling drugs to a child, will understand that if they are convicted they are going to prison and they are going to serve every day of 10 years in prison no matter who their daddy is or how they may think society has done them wrong. I also want life in prison for people who get out of prison having been convicted once of selling drugs to a minor and turn right around and do it again. I think when we look at this data on drug use it is obvious that we are not doing our job. I think we need to change that pattern. I want to double the size of the Border Patrol. This last year we took a first step. It is a major step in the right direction. Right now we have more police officers in Washington, DC, than we have Border Patrol agents trying to police and control the entire border of the United States of America. It is not unusual--in fact it is the norm--to have on any shift in a 300-mile strip from Brownsville to Laredo 87 Border Patrol agents actually working that line. We are using in many cases near- obsolete sensing devices, while the military has great night vision and infrared capacity. We do not have similar capability in the Border Patrol. That needs to change. We need to double the size of the Border Patrol over the next 5 years. I believe that given the threat we face from armed drug gangs, with automatic weapons, with night-vision capability, and with sophisticated electronic communications basically invading our country nightly, that we do not now have the resources we need and we have certainly not committed the will to keep drugs out of our country. We need to expand the capacity of the FBI Academy. I think we should have a goal that within 5 years we double the training capacity of the FBI Academy. In no other way can we give local law enforcement personnel the enrichment of training that they need and which can, in turn, be passed on within their police departments and their sheriff departments. We need to expand the size of the DEA. I think if you will look at your individual State, you are going to find that in many vast regions we have only two or three or four DEA agents. And let me make it clear. I have no criticism of our Border Patrol agents, our FBI agents, our DEA agents. They are doing their job. The problem is they are not getting the support they need from Washington. We need to prosecute vigorously drug felons in general and criminals who are selling drugs to children. I would like to see us change our building code and stop building prisons like Holiday Inns. We have at least three Federal statutes which criminalize making prisoners work. Prisoners cannot produce goods to be sold across State lines. They cannot produce items to be sold within the State. We have limits on the transport of prison-produced goods and you have to pay the union scale if you make prisoners work. Needless to say, not many prisoners in America are working and producing anything of value. We took the first step in the Senate toward changing that last year. That effort died because it was opposed in the House and by the President. But I think we need to continue to work to change the criminal justice system in America. In addition to that, we have to take a zero-tolerance approach to drugs. We need to make it very clear to young people that drug use is not acceptable. We need to hold people who are buying drugs just as responsible as people who are selling drugs. Whether we are talking about a high school student or a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, drug use should be a serious matter. I think we ought to call on our professional athletic leagues, the NFL, professional baseball, professional basketball, to set higher standards. If people are going to be set out as role models for our children, I think when they have established a pattern of drug use they ought not to be playing professional football or professional basketball. I think these are changes that need to be looked at. If you look at this data and you are not alarmed, then I think you do not understand this problem. I think drug use represents one of the greatest threats we face. I thank our colleague from Georgia for leading this effort to try to make the public more aware of it. I am hopeful that we will have an opportunity in Commerce-State-Justice appropriations to look at our priorities in terms of the Border Patrol and law enforcement. We should pass a major new crime and antidrug bill which is aimed at getting tough on those who are selling drugs but which also holds accountable those who are buying drugs. I am very proud of the provision in the welfare bill which for the first time takes the public policy position that if you are convicted of a drug felony, we are not going, through our welfare programs, to give you a base pay in welfare and food stamps while you are out selling drugs at the local junior high school; that one of the things that is going to happen to you if we convict you of a drug felony under our new welfare bill is you are going to lose your cash welfare benefits and you are going to lose your food stamps. I think that is a perfectly reasonable proposal, and I think it is something that should be expanded. Our society should take a zero- tolerance approach to drugs. I think that is the only way we are going to solve this problem. When Nancy Reagan was saying no, when our country was taking a stronger approach, drug use fell for 11 years. It seems in recent years our Government has not been saying no, and, as a result, drug use has skyrocketed among our children. I think we need to do something about it. I yield the floor. Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me thank our dear colleague from Georgia.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I have always tried to make it a matter of policy to be supportive of the President on international and military affairs whenever possible. I think each of us in the Senate owe it to the President to give him the benefit of the doubt on military matters. Certainly we owe it to those in uniform to be supportive of them when they are in harm's way. I believe that given the conflict among the warring Kurdish factions in the northern part of Iraq and the instability there that the President's actions can be justified both to send a warning to Saddam Hussein and to destroy the air defense capability in the southern part of the country so that we might extend the no-fly zone. But, having said that, Mr. President, let me make it very clear that while giving the President the benefit of the doubt I can support the actions he has taken in firing 27 cruise missiles and destroying air defense capacity in expanding the no-fly zone, and while I certainly support our military forces in the region, if we look at the fundamental conflict, it is a conflict between two warring Kurdish factions--one backed by Iraq and one backed by Iran, and we do not have a dog in that fight. If this conflict escalates, if this becomes a conflict between Iran and Iraq, I think the President would be poorly advised in becoming involved in that conflict and I would not and could not support such an involvement.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I was scheduled by our prior agreement to begin speaking at 1, and the time was to revert over to our side. I am here, having rearranged my schedule on the basis of this. So, while I always like to accommodate the Senator, we had an agreement. Our colleagues have had an opportunity now for an extended period of time to present their views to the world, which were very interesting and very enlightening. But our turn comes at 1 o'clock. So I feel constrained to object.

Mr. GRAMM. To come back to our side.

Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, could I hear it again?

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me now talk about welfare. We are going to pass here in the Senate tonight a welfare reform bill that has the promise of dramatically changing a system which has failed in America. Let me begin by talking about the failure. In the past 30 years, we have spent $5.4 trillion on welfare programs; programs where we were trying to help poor people. Nobody in America knows what a trillion dollars is. So let me try to put that number in perspective. If you take the total value of all buildings, all plants and equipment, and all productive tools in American industry and agriculture combined, they are worth about $5 trillion. So if you want to know how much we have invested in the old welfare program over the past 30 years, it is roughly the equivalent of the value of all buildings, all plants and equipment, and all of the tools of all the workers in the United States of America. No society in history has ever invested more money trying to help needy people than the United States of America has invested. Yet, what has been the result of all of those good intentions? What has been the result of that investment? The result of that investment, 30 years later, is that we have as many poor people today as we had 30 years ago. They are poorer today, they are more dependent on the Government today, and by any definition of quality of life, fulfillment, or happiness, people are worse off today than they were when we started the current welfare system. When we started the War on Poverty in the mid-1960s, two-parent families were the norm in poor families in America. Today, two-parent families are the exception. Since 1965, the illegitimacy rate has tripled. I know that we have colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are going to lament the passage of this new welfare reform bill. But I do not see how anybody with a straight face, or a clear conscience, can defend the status quo in welfare. Our current welfare program has failed. It has driven fathers out of the household. It has made mothers dependent. It has taken away people's dignity. It has bred child abuse and neglect, and filled the streets of our cities with crime. And we are here today to change it. Let me outline what our program does. I think if each of us looks back to a period when our ancestors first came to America, or back to a time when those who have gone before us found themselves poor, we are going to find that there are two things that get individuals and nations out of poverty. Those two things are work and family. I think it is instructive to note that those are the two things that we have never applied to the current welfare program of the United States of America. The bill before us asks people to work. It says that able-bodied men and women will be required to work in order to receive benefits. It sets a time limit so that people cannot make welfare a way of life. It seeks to change the incentives within the welfare system. And I believe the time has come to change those incentives within the welfare system. So what we have done in adopting this bill is make some very simple changes. No. 1, we have said that unless you are disabled, welfare is not a permanent program. It is a temporary program. We are going to help you for up to 5 years. We are going to train you. But at the end of 5 years, you are going to have to work. We have also in this program given the States the ability to run their own programs. We believe that the Federal Government does not have all the wisdom in the world, and that States should run welfare. What we have done is we have taken a federally-run program, we have taken the funds that we have spent on that program, and we have given that money to the States so that, rather than have one program, each State in the Union can tailor its program to meet its individual needs. I believe that we have put together a positive program. It is a program that asks people to work. It is a program that tries to make Americans independent. It is a program that for the first time uses work and family to help families in America escape welfare and to escape poverty. I think this is a major achievement. I am very proud of this bill, and I hope we can get a sound vote for it. I know there will be those who say that the President, in committing to sign this bill, is going to end up taking credit for it. I do not believe the American people care who gets credit for this bill. We know that had there been no Republican majority in both Houses of Congress, we would never have passed this bill. We know that without a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress, we would not have a mandatory work requirement. We would not be changing welfare as we know it. But it seems to me that the return we are going to get for adopting this bill is worth letting the President take a substantial amount of credit for it. I think this is a major step in the right direction. I am very proud of this bill. I commend it to my colleagues. I yield the floor. Mr. D'AMATO addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Excuse me, I thought I had 10 minutes on welfare.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me just reschedule time to talk about welfare.

Mr. GRAMM. All right.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, it is an incredible paradox that while today we celebrate one of the most dramatic legislative victories certainly in this Congress and in the last decade, we are here responding to our Democratic colleagues who came over to give us a lesson in perverted economics this morning. They tell us how things are great because they had the courage to raise taxes, and if only we had raised taxes more and spent more, things would even be better. I personally do not believe the American people are going to adopt that brand of economics. I would simply like to say that if we had not raised taxes in 1993, but rather had cut spending and adopted the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, the economy would be stronger, and we would not be having an economic recovery, which happens to be one of the weakest economic recoveries in any postwar period.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Let me make my point, and then I will be happy to. Here are the facts: ISTEA says that the allocation of funds among States shall be based on the most recent data available. That is what it says. The most recent data available, provided by the Treasury Department, was the data which was, in fact, provided under the law. In fact, if you will read the letter sent to Senator Baucus, basically that letter makes it clear that it is the Department of Transportation's position that it does not have authority to use anything other than the official accounts of the trust fund maintained by the Department of the Treasury in calculating apportionments among the States. Here is the point. When the Treasury gave their estimate, they gave that estimate based on the best data they had available and required by the law. It is true that, if you go back after the fact and take data that they did not have that they could have had, you could have allocated funds differently. But to call that an error is simply a misuse of the English language. The Department of Transportation used the best estimate they had based on the data they had. Now, what the Senator from Montana is trying to do is to say that, because they did not have data then which they now have, that we should now go back and alter allocations. No one disputes that the 1997 formula, which is in the bill before us, is based on the newest data, which no one disputes as being the best available data that apparently everyone is satisfied with, no one says that the allocation of funds in this bill are in any way unfair for fiscal year 1997. If they do, I have not heard it. But what the Senator is saying is that because the Treasury did not have final 1994 data in 1996 when they did the estimate, and because they gave the best data available, complied with the letter and the spirit of the law, that knowing now what that data turned out to be after the fact that we could go back last year and rewrite the formula. Clearly, ISTEA provides no authority whatsoever to do that, and what is being sought here is rewriting ISTEA. This is legislation on an appropriations bill. This is taking an allocation for 1997, that no one disputes as being valid, and changing it to reallocate funds to reflect an allocation that would have occurred had the Department of Transportation had data which was not available. It seems to me that this is gamesmanship that we can engage in endlessly. Let me give you an example. Next year we may have the final 1995 data. Next year we might even have the 1996 data. It would be possible for this Senator or any other Senator next year to stand up and say, ``When the allocation was done for 1997, the Department of the Treasury relied on 1995 data, but actually, if they had known what the 1996 tax collections would have been, they could have had a different allocation.'' My point being, this amendment could be offered every single year because there is a lag in available data that the Treasury is able to provide the Department of Transportation to do these estimates. What we have done in the past is simply each year made the fairest estimate that we could make. But I am not aware that we have ever gone back retroactively and said, if Treasury had had newer data and if they had provided it to the Department of Transportation data that we now know but was not known then, could not have been known then, that last year's allocation could be rewritten. I hope my colleagues will understand and agree with me that next year this same amendment could be offered because next year we will have the actual data for the next year in this series--1995-1996. We could stand up and argue that the actual allocation in the bill before us--not last year--is wrong because it is based on 1995 data which is the best data available but that next year when we get 1996 data it might produce a different allocation. The point is that while 31 States in fact do benefit, some very slightly, by this reallocation, this amendment could be offered every single year to every Department of Transportation allocation of funds under ISTEA because each year we get a new data point. You could take that data point which was not available when the funds were allocated by the formula, but, if it had been available, the allocation would have been different. Do we want to do this every single year? Am I to stand up next year when the 1996 data is available and say had we known in writing in the 1997 allocation what the actual 1996 data was, which we do not know today, that the allocation would have been different and Texas would have gotten more money and, therefore, I want to go back retroactively and take money in the 1998 bill away from some other State, perhaps Montana, to give to Texas? I think this is a very, very bad precedent, and it is something that could be done every single year. That is the point. I hope that we will not do this because we are setting a precedent that it seems to me simply leaves chaos in the allocation of these funds. I yield the floor. Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.