Kay Hutchison

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I further ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the second Moseley-Braun amendment, there be 20 minutes for debate, equally divided in the usual form, on the Graham amendment No. 2565, to be followed by a vote on or in relation to that amendment, with that rollcall vote limited to 10 minutes in length.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I further ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the Moseley-Braun amendment, the Senate proceed to 4 minutes for debate, equally divided in the usual form, on the second amendment, No. 2472, to be followed by a vote on or in relation to that amendment, with that rollcall vote limited to 10 minutes in length.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I further ask unanimous consent that at 9 a.m. the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 4, the welfare bill, and there be 10 minutes for debate on the Moseley-Braun amendment No. 2471, to be followed by a vote on or in relation to the Moseley-Braun amendment No. 2471.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in recess until 9 a.m. on Wednesday, September 13, 1995.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I would be happy to let Senator Bumpers proceed. I do not mind waiting. I am going to be here anyway.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, it was very difficult to solve the formula issue when we decided we were going to reform welfare. The most fair formula is the underlying bill, the Dole-Hutchison formula. What it does is allow everyone to win at some point. No one loses what they have now. Yet, the low-benefit, high-growth States are not penalized in years 3, 4, and 5. When we decided to block grant for 5 years, we had to look at the accommodation for the high-growth States where they had low benefits. That is because the high-benefit States get their windfall in the beginning. Whereas, California gets $1,016 per poor person grant. States like Alabama get $148. Mississippi gets $138, as compared to $1,000. So the goal of our underlying bill is to reach parity slowly, without hurting the New Yorks, the Michigans, and the Californias, but bringing up the States that no longer have to have a State match and are very poor. So it is equitable and it is fair. I ask my colleagues to look at the overall picture and understand that if we are going to have welfare reform, we must start with the new parameters, which are that the State match is going to be phased out. Yes, New York and California had big State matches and, therefore, got more Federal dollars. They are going to keep those Federal dollars, even as the State's match is phased out. But the low-benefit, high- growth States are going to get their help in the end. That is why this is a balance. That is why this is fair and why the low-benefit States are not going to have to pay in order for California to continue to grow. We will never reach parity under the Feinstein amendment. There will never be fairness in the system as we go to the Federal dollars, without State matches. The only way that we can go toward the goal of parity and equality in this country is to stay with the underlying bill. I hope you will vote against the Feinstein amendment and stick with the Dole-Hutchison formula, which is fair to everyone.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues not to vote for this amendment.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President at the request of the Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Bumpers], I ask unanimous consent that his name be added as a cosponsor of S. 978.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I just want to say this formula would not have come about without Senator Kyl and Senator Mack, who is the next speaker and I want to yield the remainder of my time tonight to Senator Mack from Florida.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I yield 30 seconds to the Senator from Arizona.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I get 4 more minutes because I have two other speakers.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I think I only have--

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I yield 30 seconds to the senior Senator from Florida.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, let me finish this thought, and I want to yield the floor to Senator Domenici for 2 minutes. We have the poor States that will continue to lose under the Feinstein amendment. The third thing that is wrong with the Feinstein amendment is that it directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to determine poverty estimates by means of sampling, estimation, or any other method that the Secretary determines will produce reliable data. Now, Mr. President, that is a hole as big as a Mack truck. Who knows what the formula might be? We just cannot live with that. We must have something that we can count on that will not be jiggered or changed over the years, to be considered fair. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I yield the Senator from New Mexico 2 minutes.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I ask unanimous consent to be extended 2 minutes.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I yield myself 6 minutes of our time. I want to start by thanking the Senator from Pennsylvania. I appreciate all of his efforts on this bill. He is one of the first people who understood the balance in the formula. Mr. President, this formula is very carefully balanced. That is why it is fair. The challenge we had was to make a fair formula in a totally reformed welfare system with a 5-year block grant. Now, here was the problem. You have high-welfare States that gain in the beginning because they are block granted for 5 years. These are States that have put more into their welfare spending and therefore have gotten more out. A State that has put more in has also gotten more Federal matching funds. Therefore, they have gotten more total AFDC dollars. Now, you have low-benefit States that have not put up as much money. My State is 35th in per capita income and may not have been able to put up as much. So they have gotten fewer Federal dollars. In we come with welfare reform. Now we are going to lessen the State requirement. We will have no State requirement at all in the last 2 years of this 5-year plan. So we have to reform the formula as well, to keep the low-benefit States that are growing from being in a desperate situation. So the challenge was not to take from anyone, but to allow these low-benefit, high-growth States to be able to win in the end, so that they march toward parity. If I can say one thing about this formula, it is that we have a goal of parity at some point in the future. I would like to be at parity today; so would Senator Domenici, so would Senator Nickles, and so would Senator Gramm. We would like to be at parity right now. But even after 5 years, our States will not be at parity. But we know that we have to make accommodations so that everyone can feel that they have gained something from welfare reform. So we are willing to move slowly toward parity, which should be the goal of this country--for every poor person to have the same basic general grant in welfare. My solution, the Dole-Hutchison formula, does exactly that. Some have said that food stamps make up for inequity. This is not true. If you put AFDC and food stamps together, which gives you the fairest picture, even after 5 years with the Dole-Hutchison formula, here is what you have. The higher welfare States like California that are frozen still get more than their percent of the poverty population in Federal dollars at the end of 5 years. California will get 14.41 percent of the Federal dollars under my formula, whereas, they have 14.1 percent of the poverty population. So they will be getting $141 million more than their actual share of the poverty population. Because they are frozen at the higher level, they are going to be big winners in the beginning, and they will still not be losers at the end. Hawaii, for instance, will have double its poverty population in Federal benefits. New York will have 9.94 percent of all the Federal AFDC dollars, whereas it has 7.6 percent of the poverty population. Massachusetts will get 1.99 percent of the Federal dollars, whereas, it has 1.7 percent of the poverty population. Michigan will get 4.16 percent of the dollars, whereas, it has 3.6 percent of the poverty population. Washington State will get 1.96 percent of the total Federal dollars whereas they have 1.5 percent of the poverty population. Now, these are States that are going to be frozen at the higher levels. That is why these States win even though they are frozen. If you take their Federal dollars frozen plus their food stamps they still come out ahead of their poverty population percent. Now, what is wrong with the Feinstein amendment? Let me say that the Feinstein amendment, she has done her homework. I admire the Senator from California very much. Here is what is wrong with this amendment. It redistributes the growth even to high-benefit States so they get a double advantage. They get a high Federal benefit in the beginning and they get the growth. So what happens? They increase in poverty requirements, which are an incentive to even the high-welfare States to continue having growing poverty statistics. The second thing that is wrong with the Feinstein amendment is parity will never be reached. We will never reach the goal in this country to have general parity across the Nation of all of the AFDC grants. Let me give some examples of the difference between the Dole- Hutchison formula and what Senator Feinstein's formula would do to the poor States. California receives $1,016 per poor person now. Alabama receives $148 per poor person, and yet under the Feinstein amendment Alabama will lose $11 million more under her formula than they would get under mine because they will grow under mine because they are poor. Arkansas, $137 per poor person as compared to $1,016 from California.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I will be managing the time on this amendment for our side. Mr. President, I want to lay out exactly what my amendment does, or my formula, the Dole-Hutchison formula, does. Senator Santorum is going to have to leave in 7 minutes, so I would like to ask him to speak for 2 or 3 minutes, and then I will lay out the parameters of the Dole-Hutchison formula so that everyone understands why it is the fairest formula.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, on behalf of the leader and for the information of all Senators, the Senate will immediately begin resuming consideration of the welfare reform bill. As a reminder to all Senators, there will be two rollcall votes beginning at 9:30 this morning. The first vote will be on or in relation to the Brown amendment No. 2465, to be followed by a vote on or in relation to the Santorum amendment No. 2477. In addition, there are a number of pending amendments to the welfare reform bill. Therefore, further rollcall votes can be expected. Also, as a reminder, by a previous consent agreement, all amendments must be offered by 5 p.m. today to be in order to the welfare bill.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I would like to add my congratulations to the committee chairman and the ranking member of our committee for the superb job they did in this authorization bill. Many people came together to make this bill happen. I think the chairman provided leadership. He stood for a strong national defense. It was a bipartisan effort on behalf of the full committee to try to make sure that when our young men and women sign up to protect our freedom, they will have the training and the backing of our country to do the job. That is what the chairman decided we were going to do. There was not a week that went by that the chairman did not talk to his fellow members and colleagues about the importance of keeping our strong national defense. So I want to commend him for the great job that he did. I am proud to be a member of the Armed Services Committee. I also want to commend the leadership of Senator Warner, the No. 2 person on the committee, who was deputized by the chairman to meet with people on the very important issue of theater missile defense, because this is an important long- term issue for our country. Senator Warner led the effort, along with Senator Cohen, Senator Nunn, and Senator Levin, to make sure that we did have a strong commitment to our own defenses so that no matter what might happen in the field of technology in the next 10 years, we are going to protect our country and our shores. So I commend Senator Thurmond, Senator Nunn, Senator Warner, and all of those who made this very important bill happen, and I will look forward to working with them in the conference committee to maintain the freedom and the protection and security of our country in the fine tradition that we have had.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee. I, too, want to commend the chairman of the committee, the ranking member from Georgia, and the group that got together and worked long into the night before the summer recess in an attempt to reach an accommodation that would allow everyone to feel comfortable about how we are treating theater missile defense. Mr. President, I want to speak because I believe that we have only settled this issue in a very temporary way this year. But I want to say that it is very important for us to look at this for the future because this is going to be one of the major policy decisions that we are going to have to make, not only today but for the future. I think the Senator from Georgia was correct when he said that we may have to make some adjustments in the ABM Treaty. It may well be not only in our best interest to do so, but it may be in the best interest of Russia as well. We are continuing to make adjustments in the post-cold war era. We do not live in a bipolar world anymore. We now live in a multipolar world, but we have treaties that were based on the bipolar world. We have many other concerns that were addressed in a bipolar context. We know now that technology exists for ballistic missiles in more than 10 countries around the world. No longer is the threat just from the missiles that we know are in Russia and some of the former republics of the Soviet Union that are now independent countries. We now recognize that there are capabilities in many other nations around the world and that in the future the technology will likely proliferate to such an extent that many countries may soon have the capability of launching ballistic missiles that could threaten our Nation. So it is incumbent on us as leaders of our country to prepare, and we must have the time to do that and we must start looking at some of these policy issues that must be addressed in this new multipolar world. As many of us who have traveled into some of the central European countries and into the republics of the former Soviet Union know, this is an unstable world. We are seeing ethnic conflicts. We are seeing border disputes. We are seeing turf wars. I think the United States is going to have to step back and decide, what our role should be in this new world? When are our armed forces going to be needed? When do we have a U.S. interest and when is that interest a vital U.S. security interest? I think it is clear just from what has happened in the last 2 weeks that the world is looking to America for leadership. If there is one thing America is--and it is probably the consensus in the world--we are the beacon for a democracy that has worked and that has created the strongest Nation in the history of the world. Because of that, many countries are looking to us for leadership, and we must determine how much leadership we can give, how much is monetary, and how much is security oriented. And I think that is going to have to set the stage for how we prepare to be the world's superpower and yet maintain our strength and protect our shores. The greatest lesson of all is that the cold war was ended; we obtained that peace through strength. We did not end the cold war through weakness. Other countries in the world knew that we had the capacity and the commitment to protect our interests. We must never veer from that fundamental principle that we are a superpower that will protect ourselves. We must not allow unilateral disarmament of any kind, of any type. When you talk about a treaty that was made in a bipolar world between the two preeminent powers at the time you cannot have any confidence that those who wrote that treaty could envision all of the things that could happen in the world today. No treaty at that time could ever envision the technologies available to many countries today that have rendered the treaty outdated, outmoded, and no longer a strong approach for us to take. So we are going to have to look at our strategic interests, and in doing that we are going to have to determine what we must do as the leaders of our country to make sure we will have appropriate defenses against any missile that could ever come into our borders. That is something we are going to have to debate this year, and we are going to have to continue our vigilance to make sure our young people know they can be assured of the strength of our country and that we have the foresight and the vision to maintain that strength. I am going to support the compromise that has been reached, but I do have reservations that we are not as a group looking to what we must do to make sure we have the strength to withstand any kind of attack that technology has the capability to deliver to our shores. And I think we are going to have to continue our debates, continue our studies, continue our technological advances, and under no circumstances at any time should we say we are not going to defend our shores, that we are not going to make sure that our nuclear stockpile, which is dormant, is nevertheless still capable. Unilateral disarmament is not anything we can consider in any manner if we are going to remain the greatest and only superpower left in the world. So I commend my colleagues for coming to this conclusion. But it is merely the beginning of a very important policy debate that I think is going to be more important as we learn more of the technologies and the intelligence about what is happening around the world in the area of defense and security. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. And reliability of our existing stockpile. Unless we have the ability to continue experiments and testing, we cannot assure either. Hydronuclear testing will not violate any U.S. treaty commitment nor our self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing. This is a key issue for the future of this country. We now know there are nuclear capacities in as many as 16 countries around the world. The idea that we would not maintain our nuclear stockpile and have the ability to test and make sure that we can defend this country is one I will never understand. So, Mr. President, this is a key issue. I am going to withdraw my amendment because I want to have a Defense bill so the armed services of this country will have the money they need, after October 1, to defend our country. But this issue will not go away. This is an issue of our future and the safety of our future generations. It is clear from the delays and the hold up in completing action on the Defense authorization bill for the first time in at least 10 years and maybe more, and the threat to overturn this bill that we have worked so hard on for the last 2 days--it is clear we have a philosophical difference between the Democrats and Republicans in this Senate. I am not going to hold up the bill but, Mr. President, we will not back away from protecting our future generations. I will bring this bill up again and again and again, until we make sure that we can do what we need to do to preserve our future.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. It makes sure we have new reactor options for disposition of fissile materials. Why do we need this amendment? We need this amendment because the Department of Energy's published 5-year budget plan calls for cuts in the weapons activities of up to 40 percent in fiscal year 1997 and beyond. The DOE portion of the Defense authorization bill should be used for its intended purpose, to meet the nuclear deterrent capability and the security needs of this country. The issue is not testing of new weapons. It is about assuring U.S. nuclear deterrence. If we are going to maintain a credible nuclear weapons capability in our country, we must assure the safety----