Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I very briefly want to thank the Senator from New York for his kind words. He has made here what is to me a very important point, a very stunning point, and I just want to repeat it if I may, which is that there is a way in which the collapse of the family opens the door, in the metaphor that the Senator has used, to the further collapse of the family. And we are, of course, generalizing here. There are many circumstances where this does not take place. But if you have a situation where babies are born to unmarried women and there is no father in the house, then as the baby, if it is a girl, grows up, will the mother be able to alone protect the child from a man who may be a predator? And I understand it is much more complicated in many cases than that. But there is a way in which nature has created this unit, and we all have our roles to play in it. The single, poor mother may be ill- equipped to alone defend her child, against a man whose intentions are not good. The Senator is right, we do not enforce these statutory rape laws anymore, but they are statutory. These acts are illegal, and they are illegal for a good reason. The consequences are disastrous, and I think if we can put some fear out there by more vigorously enforcing these laws, we not only will be doing what is right, but we may actually have an effect on the rate of out-of-wedlock births. I thank the Senator from New York. I personally thank the Senator from Pennsylvania, not only for the thoughtfulness of his earlier comments, but for the kindness of yielding the floor to me. I went on a bit longer than I expected to, but I appreciate very much his kindness to me. Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. That is right.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I say to the Senator, the numbers are overpowering. Of course, remember, as we think of the accumulated welfare rolls, we are talking about those children, in a sense, times 18--it comes out to a little bit less--but until they reach the age of majority. That tells us two things. One is the extraordinary number of children involved here. And second, the extraordinary cost of the program. I saw a number about a year or two ago that said in any given year we spent $34 billion on children born out of wedlock. That is an amazing number, $34 billion. That is the accumulation of funding to support children from birth to 18. So this program needs reform, but let us do it with a sense of humility and understanding about the human impact of what is happening here. Mr. President, let me come now to the so-called Work First plan, introduced by Senator Daschle and many others of us. I think this is real reform that would improve the lives of welfare beneficiaries, break the cycle of dependency, better serve the taxpayers of this country, and better reflect the values of the American people. The primary welfare program in this country, AFDC, is failing in what ought to be its most important task--moving welfare beneficiaries into the work force. We have seen some improvement as a result of the jobs program coming off of the Family Support Act. This Work First plan continues that improvement by changing the strategy and devoting the resources for moving real people into real jobs. This proposal would also give welfare beneficiaries some genuine incentives to break the cycle of poverty, give them the same incentives that we have associated with characteristic American values instead of trapping them, enslaving them in dependency by discontinuing current programs that reward single parents who do not work, do not marry, and have children out of wedlock. These are steps that many of us on this side are united in taking because the existing system really does contradict our most cherished values and contributes to society's most serious problems. The Work First plan actually replaces the AFDC program, so welfare as we have known it will not exist if the Daschle substitute is adopted. It replaces AFDC with a Temporary Employment Assistance Program that is focused on putting people to work. It gives States the flexibility and the incentives they need to successfully move people into the private sector for jobs. It also addresses two of the key causes of welfare dependency that I have spoken about. Through child support enforcement it finally forces deadbeat dads to assume at least their financial responsibility, and it starts a major national campaign to reduce out-of-wedlock births, particularly to teenagers. Mr. President, others have said it but I will say it again, and it is very important to say. While preserving the kind of guarantee that those who are genuinely poor and unable to work will receive some benefits, the minimum assistance consistent with what I have described as America's best charitable [[Page S 12699]] nature, the Work First substitute ends unconditional welfare benefits. Each person receiving assistance will have to sign an individualized personal empowerment contract. This is something new that has come up from the States. As the Senator from Iowa indicated earlier, if the recipients do not comply with the contract--in other words, you do not just get the benefit but you have to promise in a signed contract to do some things in return, including, of course, looking for work from day one on welfare--then the beneficiaries will lose some, and ultimately could lose all of their benefits if they do not comply with their end of the bargain--mutual responsibility. While the contract may include some training for education, the emphasis is going to be on work experience. All recipients will be required to search for a job from day one. Eligibility for benefits is going to be limited to 5 years, although children whose parents reach this time limit will still be eligible for vouchers to enable them to receive basic sustenance. This I think reflects the principle, the value, that I described earlier, which is that these are kids. These are innocent kids. Let us not punish them more than they deserve while we are trying to solve this problem, and unintentionally create a greater problem for our society. States under this Daschle substitute must focus this program directly on placing people in private sector jobs. As has been discussed in a colloquy between the Senators from Louisiana and Pennsylvania, the bill requires States to have at least 50 percent of their caseload working by the year 2001. It moves away from telling States how to succeed and instead rewards results. States that have high private sector job placement rates will receive a financial bonus. Mr. President, the work requirements in this bill are tough, and just as important, they are funded. We understand that child care assistance is the critical link between welfare and work. Unlike the alternative proposal, this substitute gives States the child care funding they need to put people in jobs and move them off welfare. Mr. President, I noted a discussion among my colleagues a short time ago about the importance of trying to achieve a bipartisan result. I could not agree more. I recall the Senator from New York indicated the overwhelming bipartisan support for the Family Support Act of 1988. As you look at these bills, as I have, there is a lot that holds them together. There is a lot in common. I hope we can build on that common base in the next week as we move toward passing legislation. In some ways, it has actually been quite gratifying to watch the bills change, and in this sense, watch Senator Dole's bill as it has evolved. The first major change, as I see it, was related to the so-called participation requirements in the original version of Senator Dole's bill. These requirements for the States did not require the States to move beneficiaries into jobs, as I read the original proposal. That has now changed. And work standards very much like those included in the Daschle substitute are now included in the Dole bill. And there, I hope, is one common basis from which we can build. Mr. President, the Daschle substitute also tackles the critical problem of teen pregnancy. Unmarried teen parents are particularly likely to fall into long-term welfare dependency. More than one-half of welfare spending goes to women who first gave birth as teens. This legislation, among other things, requires teen mothers to live at home and helps communities establish supervised group homes for single teen mothers; that is, second-chance homes. Mr. President, within the last couple of years, I have been so perplexed by this problem of babies being born to unmarried mothers. I have spent some time visiting programs in Connecticut, visiting with teens, trying to understand how this has happened, how these numbers have skyrocketed as they have. I do not have any conclusive answer. But one thing I found in some of my conversations with young women who have had babies while they were teenagers is when you ask them, ``Why? Why did you do it,'' it is very interesting. Almost every time I have had this conversation, the mothers will say, ``I love my baby, but I wish I had waited.'' Of course, in that, they are acknowledging that it is not only the child born to the unwed mother in poverty that suffers. It is the mother, whose dreams are severely restricted as a result of suddenly having a child to care for. But once you get beyond that, and they say they wish they had waited, and you ask why this happened, some just give the obvious answer. ``I did not use birth control.'' I found others saying that they did it intentionally. They had the child because they wanted to get out of their homes. They wanted to be independent. And they knew that if they had a baby, they could receive welfare payments and that would be the basis for establishing their independent residency. Obviously, that is a sad and sorry commentary--I shall leave it at that--as a motivation for bringing a child into the world. But this Daschle substitute gets to that problem by removing that motivation, by requiring teenaged mothers to live at home or live in the supervised group homes, if their home is not a suitable environment, and by requiring teenaged mothers to remain in school or in a training program, all as a condition of receiving welfare benefits. No longer will there be a blank check regardless of the behavior of the recipient. Instead, we will demand mutual responsibility. Society will try to take care of your child. We will try to help you out of dependency, but only if you make the effort yourself. Finally, Mr. President, this Daschle substitute incorporates very strong child support enforcement legislation which Senator Bradley and others introduced earlier this year. I was privileged to be a cosponsor of it. I was attorney general of the State of Connecticut, before I was honored to be elected by the people of my State to serve in this body. One of my responsibilities was enforcing child support orders. I was startled, as I went through the files--thousands of them--to see the degree to which men who had fathered children refused to accept fiscal responsibility, financial responsibility for those children, and found 100 different ways to try to avoid or make excuses for not doing so. The legislation that is part of the Daschle substitute will make it easier for States to locate absent noncustodial parents; that is, parents not having custody of the children, almost always the fathers. It will also make it easier for States to establish paternity. Science has been a great help here in facilitating the establishment of paternity through blood tests, and also establishing a court order and enforcement of court orders. The tough child support enforcement system will help keep millions of children out of poverty and off welfare. It is a simple statement. It is as simple as the fact that when babies are born to unwed mothers, they are much more likely to end up on welfare. But the fact is that if fathers took care of the children, society would not have to do so and the welfare rolls would go down. Of course, these tough child support enforcement laws will send a message of responsibility to would-be deadbeat parents, deadbeat dads. In an era of skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births and rising teen pregnancy rates, child support payments must become a clearly understood, highly visible, and unavoidable fact of life for absent parents. In other words, these absent parents must live in fear of their local prosecuting attorney or attorneys general coming after them to make sure that any money they earn will go in a substantial degree to supporting the children they have fathered. Mr. President, I will have an amendment that I will introduce later in the proceedings that expands the effort to deal with teen pregnancy, building on some work done by Kathleen Sylvester of the Progressive Policy Institute establishing a highly visible national campaign to cut the rate of teenage births, setting goals for States, giving them some money to innovate with programs to cut the rate of teen pregnancies, and rewarding them as we do with regard to placement of people in private- sector jobs when they achieve a reduction in teen pregnancies. One of the dreadful facts that comes out as we go over this problem of teen pregnancies is that a remarkable percentage of the babies born to teenage mothers have been fathered by men [[Page S 12700]] who are considerably older. So the vision that we may have of two reckless teenagers casually creating a baby is not the norm. As I understand it; it is men who are typically older than these teenaged girls who, in a setting that is often abusive, exploitive, or overpowering, are fathering these children in acts that from a legal point of view are pure and simple statutory rape. And there is not much we can do from Washington to deal with that except to--and my amendment will have some element to it that will--try to encourage the States, the local prosecuting attorneys, the district attorneys to be very aggressive in working with the welfare authorities to once again take statutory rape as a serious crime and to prosecute it, understanding that this is done to deter adult men from committing a sexual act that will result in a child born to poverty, who to a devastating degree is likely to end up a part of the criminal problem in society. So I hope we can begin to take from these statistics of the ages of the men who are fathering too many of the children born to teenaged mothers, some attempt to build a genuine national effort among prosecuting attorneys to look at the seriousness of a crime that in an age of permissiveness has been winked at, which is statutory rape. In conclusion, Mr. President, I think this Daschle substitute, the Work First plan, is true welfare reform. It does demand responsibility from parents while providing continued protection for children, and it does address the two key causes of welfare dependency--teen pregnancy and unpaid child support. It does reflect the values of the American people. And it does take on the welfare status quo, building on the work of the Family Support Act, and really does amount to genuine welfare reform. I understand that over the next week we will hear conflicting views on this subject. But I can only echo the sentiments expressed earlier in this Chamber, let us cut through the politics, let us get to the heart of the problem. And let us see if we can, as happened in 1988, resoundingly adopt a true welfare reform proposal. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor. Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Certainly I will.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from Pennsylvania. I was enjoying and benefiting from the thoughtful colloquy between the Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from Louisiana, and, of course, as always, benefiting from the thoughtful comments of the Senator from New York. I will say two things about what I just heard. One is that it is from this kind of thoughtful colloquy that, hopefully, a bill will emerge that has a strong bipartisan base of support. We will see whether that happens. Second, I say to my friend from New York who raised the question a moment ago of whether anybody is listening, I am listening. I have always found the Senator from New York to be right on target on these matters. Sometimes the role of the prophet is not to have the masses behind him, but if you speak the truth, ultimately they will come to you. I think that is where we are today. Mr. President, I rise to support the substitute that is now pending offered by Senator Daschle, Senator Breaux, Senator Mikulski and many others. I am privileged to be a cosponsor of the so-called Work First plan, which really represents a genuine attempt at welfare reform. Mr. President, before I speak about this pending substitute, I do want to say a few words about the colloquy that we have just heard and the comments of the Senator from New York. This is a real test for this Chamber, for the body politic, as to whether we can do what is right and what is reasonable on the question of welfare. I have yet to find, and I will be glad to present an award to, anybody who can present to me an elected official who will support the status quo regarding welfare in America today. No one does. Everyone is for reform of one kind or another. The question is what kind will it be. Do we have the capacity to break out of the business of competing images, even our own perspectives--sometimes accurate, sometimes skewed--on what is causing this dreadful problem not just of poverty but of the underlying problem of babies being born in increasing numbers to mothers who are not married, and who do not have fathers? That is the main way people get on welfare, because it is aid for dependent children. One of the most frequent ways that one qualifies for welfare, is when one is born in a situation where one's parents cannot support them. Over and over again in the millions--not the thousands, but the millions--there are children being born to parents unmarried and therefore needing welfare. These are central challenges, not just to our capacity to be reasonable and to break through the competing images and politics and to do something thoughtful, to prove that Congress can legislate, break through the politics, shake up the system, make it work, make it reflect the values of the American people as the American people are so convinced it does not now--that is, the welfare system does not now reflect their best values. Mr. President, this is a welfare program that started with such good intentions in the 1930's and now is disparaged by those who benefit from it and by those who pay for it. It is a program that has grown very, very large--billions and billions of dollars every year. Part of what is at work here is our ability to prove as elected representatives of the people of this country that we are capable of changing the status quo if they are not happy with it. A problem that took 60 years to get into will not be solved in 6 days or maybe not even in 6 years. The effort did begin with the Family Support Act, which I consider to be an act of genuine welfare reform. I believe that the Daschle substitute which is before the Senate continues that work. To me, with the prevailing mood in this country of questioning the credibility, the legitimacy, the effectiveness [[Page S 12698]] of Government to step out and deal with real problems, part of the test that we are facing in this welfare reform debate is a more general one, which is, are we capable of truly dealing with this program that has gone off the course, bringing it back to be cost effective, to be helpful to people who are beneficiaries of the program, and to better reflect our values? Let me deal with that second point. Part of the great public anger about welfare is the perception, too often accurate, that it does not reflect the best of American values. When programs of our Government, particularly ones as central and large as this one, do not reflect the values of the American people, we lose their support. It is as simple as that. What is a great basic American value? We speak about it so much it loses its meaning. It is work. It is work in the broader sense, in the sense that this is an impulse that drove so many of our parents and grandparents and great grandparents before them to come to this country. Not just, of course, the dream of political freedom which impelled millions of Americans--millions--to emigrate to America, but the dream of economic opportunity, the understanding of people who came from feudal, oligarchic, unfair economic systems where they had no opportunity that America was the country where, if you worked hard, there was nothing you could not achieve. The welfare system seems to have turned this on its head, motivated by good intentions, charitable intentions at the outset, and created a system that does not encourage work, that seems at times to reward the opposite, and that offends the great majority of people who are out there, working hard, who, too often in the last decade or two, do not see their standard of living going up but do see themselves paying large tax bills and believe in their minds, understandably, that a lot of that money they worked hard for goes to people who are not working as hard, not reflecting the values of work in this country. Family, in this society and other societies, the core unit, the basic, primal sense of responsibility, the kind of natural division of familial labor between man and woman, mother and father, is destroyed in our society in numbers, as the Senator from New York has pointed out, that we do not find--I have heard him say this--in other societies. Increasing numbers, more than a third of the babies, as I said before, are born in this country every year with no family, a mother living alone without a father, a desperate situation causing all sorts of problems for our society including contributing greatly to the problem of crime and violent crime. But the point I make here, as I speak about values, is that of the basic value of parents caring for their children. Let me focus on the fathers, whose absence is the cause of so many millions of mothers having to go on welfare, fathers not accepting and carrying out what we would think would be the most fundamental, uncomplicated, natural sense of obligation: to take care of their children. So, this program, as it exists, offends some basic American values. It challenges us to bring the program into line with those values, to gather more support, to open the way for the American people to return to their basic nature, which is to be charitable, which is naturally to want to help people who cannot help themselves. But the majority of American people, I am afraid, feel that welfare, as it exists now, takes advantage of their good natures. I think part of the challenge that we have is to break through and reform this program, genuinely reform it so it reflects the values held by most Americans and once again liberates their better natures to care for those who cannot care for themselves. I will make one final point in this opening, general part of my statement, Mr. President, which is this. The Senator from New York touched on this as he talked about the extraordinary percentages of children in various of our cities who are at one time or another on welfare, AFDC: 47 percent, 67 percent. These are astounding numbers, but they bring me to make this point. I want to urge my colleagues here to go forward with a certain sense of humility and caution, understanding that as we reform welfare we are not dealing here with widgets. We are not dealing here with constructs of wood and metal and paper. We are dealing here with people, and particularly with millions of children--if I may say so, millions of God's children--whose fate it was, through no act of their own, to be born poor, to be born, in the majority of cases, with only one parent accepting any responsibility for them. So, as we go forward, understandably in the direction of reform, I hope we will remember that it is these children who are going to be affected and that they are innocents. Let us innovate, let us demand, let us come down hard on those whose misbehavior is the cause of this system that in so many ways has failed. But let us not punish the children. And let us not leave the streets of our cities and towns full of children for whom no one will take responsibility. We do not want a country like that.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, the announcement that Senator Pell has made today that he will retire from the Senate at the end of this term obviously in one sense fills us with sadness because we will no longer have the benefit of his service and the pleasure of his company. In another sense, I would say it is not just sadness; it is a time to celebrate and express respect for an extraordinary career of service in the Senate. Claiborne Pell has run the race well and has an awful lot to be proud of. He leaves a legacy of great accomplishment. I think we will not only think first but quite significantly of the Pell grants. I do not know how many recipients of those Pell grants, whose lives have been changed by the opportunity Senator Pell's legislative leadership gave them as poor people to receive an education, know exactly who Claiborne Pell is, but they ought to know. He is a man who came to the Senate with a proud tradition of service in his family which he carried forward. He is a man who has measured himself by his accomplishments and by the principles which his service has reflected. The Pell grants may be the most visible of them because of the extent to which his name is attached to them, but that is only the beginning of his service. I think also of not only the other work he has done to support public education and broadening opportunity in this country but the pioneering work--and often the lonely work--he has done on behalf of the rule of law in international relations. He carries around in his pocket the charter of the United Nations. I do not know of another Member of Congress--there it is--who does that. Claiborne Pell was there when the charter was put together and ratified, and his service in this Chamber has been a service that respected and attempted to give meaning and life to the great hopes and principles for international law expressed in that charter. He has pursued individually and as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ratification of treaties that would have sat dormant, treaties that expressed hopes, offered the opportunity to realize and create some rule of law and morality in international affairs where they might not otherwise exist. This is an extraordinary legacy, a legacy of substantial accomplishment. But I wish to say at this time--and it is not all that one wants to say, but I do want to say in the midst of a time in our politics when people have become all too vicious and partisan, where people strive too often for political advantage as opposed to public service, Claiborne Pell has established a very high standard of public service and public civility. Earlier this year, the Speaker of the House, Mr. Gingrich, talked about the need to renew American civilization--a worthy goal. But it strikes me that we will not ever get to renewing American civilization unless we can renew American civility in our public and private lives. And by private lives I mean in the life of our community and in the basic interaction that we bring to our families, to our neighborhoods, to our communities and that Claiborne Pell has brought to service in this body. This is as a fellow New Englander, neighbor in Connecticut. I am very proud to think that Claiborne represents the best of our long history in his steadfast and deep commitment to the best interests of our country, in his wider vision of service to the best interests of our world, of humankind, and in the extremely decent, thoughtful way he has gone about arguing for principles and causes without ever being contentious or disagreeable. He has a wonderful family. His wife and children and grandchildren bring him the greatest pleasures I have seen when I have been with him. As to this question of his physical condition, I can offer this personal testimony. My wife and I often jog on a small track at Georgetown University right across the street from Georgetown Hospital. And many a morning as we have jogged, we have seen, usually ahead of us, a solitary figure out there, sometimes uniquely wearing a tweed coat while jogging--we do not see this often on the track--none other than our beloved Senator Claiborne Pell. So at this moment I consider myself fortunate that by a twist of fate I should be on the floor to express my great admiration for Senator Pell, my thanks to him for the model, the standard he set up for so many of the rest of us who serve here and my best wishes to him that he and his wonderful family have good luck and all of God's blessings in the many years that I know he has ahead. [Applause, Senators rising.]

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to express my deep concern over an amendment to the Treasury Postal-Service Appropriations bill that passed the Senate by a narrow margin last Saturday. The amendment, offered by Senator Nickles, would restrict coverage for abortion under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan [FEHBP], to cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is endangered. The amendment effectively and unfairly limits access to a legal medical procedure for over 1 million women who are covered under the FEHBP. This policy discriminates against women who work for the Federal Government and that is why I voted against it. Mr. President, we all have strong personal views about abortion. Some of us believe that no matter what our personal view are on abortion, a woman should have the legal right to choose under Roe versus Wade. I respect my colleagues who differ with me on this issue and I understand why they differ. But the debate over FEHBP coverage is not a debate over Roe versus Wade. The question we should be asking ourselves is this: should women who work for the Federal Government have the same effective choices as women who work for other employers? Two-thirds of women with health insurance have coverage for abortion. Removing abortion coverage from the FEHBP would effectively restrict the reproductive choices of the Federal employee--particularly the thousands of Federal employees with very modest salaries. A woman who has limited resources but does have health care coverage through FEHBP and needs an abortion would be out of luck. She may delay her abortion until she has been able to come up with the extra money necessary for an abortion. Later term abortions are more dangerous and the [[Page S 12420]] delay would unnecessarily put the woman's health at risk. Mr. President, opponents to the amendment argue that many Americans oppose abortion and that their tax dollars should not be used to support this medical procedure. But health benefits are earned benefits, they are a part of compensation package for all Federal employees. We do not judge the way Federal employees spend their earned income--it is their right to make that decision. Neither should we judge or restrict their choice of insurance plan. Taxpayer money goes to Federal workers to compensate them for the job they do. Part of that compensation is comprehensive health insurance that covers legal medical procedures. Others speaking against this amendment have argued that those Federal employees who are morally opposed to abortion and should not have to contribute to plans that cover the service. They argue that providing coverage under the FEHBP forces federally employed abortion opponents to contribute to others' insurance coverage through their health insurance premiums. But only about half of the FEHBP plans provide coverage for this medical procedure, so those who do not want to participate in a plan that covers this reproductive health services have ample alternatives. We should not, de facto, make reproductive health decisions for any woman who is employed by or is a dependent of an employee of the Federal Government. Her reproductive health decisions should be a decision made by her and her health professional. I regret the Senate adopted the Nickles amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I just wanted to take a few moments in morning business today to comment on the Waco hearings completed 2 weeks ago in the other body. Whatever one thinks of the manner in which those hearings were conducted or, indeed, about what happened at Waco itself, several important facts bear noting. Federal law enforcement agents risked their lives there, as they do every day and four of them died enforcing a search warrant authorized by a Federal court order. These are the same Federal agents who walk the most dangerous streets in America investigating crimes and arresting violent, conscience-less thugs; these are the same agents who have infiltrated the most vicious organized crime groups and shut them down; these are the same agents who have captured kidnappers and rescued the kidnapped; these are the same agents to whom we look when terrorists construct bombs and explode them in our midst. In our horror at the conflagration and deaths at Waco, we should not forget who those agents were and are. In addition, in too many of the discussions of what happened at Waco, there seems to be a blurring of who set in motion the horrible cycle of violence and death. There is a tendency on the part of some to hold everyone equally responsible for those nightmarish hours because Federal law enforcement agents and their supervisors made mistakes-- mistakes they have acknowledged and, most importantly, have taken steps not to repeat. We cannot forget that those mistakes were of an entirely different character and magnitude that those of David Koresh. Indeed, the person who is most responsible for what happened at Waco is dead. His death should not justify discounting his responsibility for what happened and somehow equating his behavior with the actions of Federal law enforcement agencies. It is David Koresh who stockpiled automatic weapons and established an arsenal large enough to start a war. It is he who fired first. It is he who abused some of his followers, psychologically and sexually, including a 10-year-old girl. It is he who shot and killed some of his followers and it is he who started the fire that killed so many others. The hearings in the other body served some good purposes. It reminded people what kind of person the Federal agents on the scene were dealing with. It reminded everyone that these agents must make life-and-death decisions on a daily basis on limited, sometimes conflicting information. It reminded everyone that they are human, and so embody all the frailties and nobility of human beings of good will. Somehow in the understandable concern about whether Federal agents had overreacted or acted too quickly at Waco, those points were too often overlooked. Our Federal law enforcement officers are some of the bravest, most extraordinary citizens I know. They deserve our respect and our gratitude.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair and look forward to returning as the debate continues. I urge my colleagues to defeat the amendment as they did defeat a similar amendment on the DOD authorization bill.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to the amendment offered by my friend and colleague from Arkansas. Mr. President, there is a sense of deja vu about this because we did, as the Senator from Arkansas has indicated, argue this out in an amendment he submitted to the Department of Defense authorization bill on the subject, which was an attempt to actually do away with the program entirely. Here in this amendment he aims to diminish the guarantee authority from $15 billion down to $5 billion. I was pleased to initiate this proposal with my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, and with my colleague from Idaho, Senator Kempthorne. I believe Senator Kempthorne is on his way to the floor to speak against the amendment that has been offered. There is a basic point here to which I do want to go back, which is that we are talking here about a way to make sure that the American defense industry can compete on a level playing field with the defense industries of other countries that are competing in the area of arms sales around the world. Mr. President, part of why we feel this is necessary and why it is a decent investment--in fact, a cost-free investment--is because all the fees are paid by those who are beneficiaries of the program. We obviously are in a time where the resources we are devoting to defense are shrinking. There have been some arguments here about whether we are spending too much in the defense authorization bill or in the appropriations bill for defense purposes before us now as others have said before me. We are spending for defense at a percentage of GDP that is historically low. And the world, with the cold war over, remains a troubled world. But let us leave that macroeconomic data aside. The fact is that each of us knows--and I can speak to this with painful intimacy coming from the State of Connecticut--our defense industries are cutting back. Thousands of people are being laid off who had good jobs and are having trouble providing for their families. That, of course, is just the worst experience for them. But what is at risk is the capacity of our country to maintain an industrial base for defense purposes so that we are capable of at least turning out a reasonable, if not minimum, number of weapons systems and equipment that we can use to defend our national security, but also to preserve these defense factories, to keep them alive, even if at a drastically reduced level, so that in case of some future conflict or crisis we will have the ability to surge, to build more; we will not have to recreate these industries. One way to do it, frankly, is for American defense companies to be involved in arms sales throughout the world. This is not a case of America sort of pushing arms on people who do not want them. This is a case of a demand for arms that will be satisfied either by American companies making weapons, made by American workers, or that demand for arms will be satisfied by foreign defense companies employing foreign defense workers. And what our companies find increasingly is that they are losing contracts to other defense companies from other countries because their governments have defense loan guarantee systems. This is the basic principle of the Eximbank which has been so important to American exporters generally, which, generally speaking, the American defense industry is prohibited from employing that we are now attempting, through the creation of this program, to extend in a limited way [[Page S 12162]] without risk here, limiting the number of countries that can be supplied with weapons. And when we went through this before, my friend from Arkansas cited many countries. But let us be very clear about it. The only countries that can participate are NATO allies, our major non- NATO allies, or qualified Central European and APEC non-Communist countries in Asia. That is a total of 37 countries. The program mechanics that are set up are structured so that defaults are highly unlikely and a country that has any record of risk will have to pay very high administrative fees. Mr. President, this is a 2-year program. Reports are required on the cost, benefits and recommendation for modification. The $15 billion limit which is in the defense appropriations bill that is before us now perhaps will not be reached, although the truth is that in this area $1 billion is a sale number that recurs over and over again. So we have to see what develops. The authorizing language in the Department of Defense bill requires that a fee be paid incrementally in proportion to the amount of the guarantee issued. And I think that is in its way a response to the second part of the amendment offered for my friend from Arkansas. I saw an article in the paper the other day. I say, finally, Mr. President, unfortunately I did not cut it out, and I do not have it with me. But it said in one category, in a large category of arms sales, that last year the French actually replaced the United States in sales. French sales doubled. American sales were cut in half. And that is a significant development which has implications for the jobs of thousands of workers here in our country and in defense plants and has implications, as I indicated, for our industrial base.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I ask for the Senator to yield the remaining time.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Two points. The Senator from Alaska made the point, I think convincingly, about why the $15 billion was chosen. Second, the Senator from Arkansas keeps talking about leading some programs to conclude that we are granting money, these billions of dollars to foreign nations. These are loan guarantees. Every other loan guarantee program, and the fees, are paid by those who use the program, and they have default rates that are extremely low. The State of California has operated a program like this for 10 years. The default rate is just under 1 percent. Finally, to my friend from Illinois, it is true we have the highest average income in Connecticut, but believe me, it is not based on those who work in the defense industry. They are losing their jobs. This bill will save thousands of those jobs and keep those workers and their families at a decent level. A final example, in the State of Connecticut the Norden defense industry operation was forced to move some of its production to Canada in order to qualify for the Canadian export defense loan guarantee program to allow Norden, a Connecticut company, to sell to a foreign buyer. Mr. President, 72 jobs leave Connecticut. This bill will turn that around.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, the Institute for the Future has completed an important report on the future of research and development in this country. This report makes the critical connection between research and development investment and the competitiveness of American industry. This important link between R&D and our economy must not be underestimated. Without sufficient investment in R&D today, we are destined to be losers in the global economic battles of tomorrow. Government and the private sector need to work as partners to make sure that our business remains competitive, bringing jobs and prosperity to our economy. Congress is currently contemplating a major shift in our R&D policy. In their zeal to balance the budget, many Members have forgotten why we are striving to balance the budget. The reason we need to balance the budget is to increase our economic prosperity. Therefore, it is counterproductive to balance the budget by cutting spending in areas that are adding to our economic prosperity. We are on the verge of making the mistake of cutting investments in the very areas that we are trying to stimulate. R&D is one of those areas. We are making unprecedented cuts in R&D, departing from an R&D policy that has enjoyed bipartisan support for 50 years, since the end of World War II. I have been working hard in support of research and development initiatives in Congress to promote many of the objectives put forth in the report from the Institute for the Future. We are currently engaged in a battle to save the Department of Commerce, business' seat at the Cabinet table. Those in Congress who seek to dismantle the Department of Commerce have not recognized that Government has a role to play in partnership with private industry to stimulate the technology development that will be the foundation of the next generation of products in the global marketplace. The Department of Commerce also performs the basic science that is required to set standards that are the critical benchmarks of modern industry. Other programs educate small- and mid-size industry in state-of-the-art technologies that allow them to compete in an increasingly fierce international competition for consumers. In addition to its R&D functions, the Department of Commerce performs trade functions that promote and protect our interests abroad. Government also has the responsibility of providing an economic environment that promotes R&D in the private sector. I am currently involved in legislation in two areas that will have a significant impact on R&D investment. I am working on a bipartisan basis to draft legislation to make the R&D tax credit permanent and more inclusive. Business cannot function in an uncertain economic environment. To make good business decisions, particularly investment in R&D, business needs to have reliable and well defined tax laws regarding R&D tax credits. A permanent R&D tax credit will provide business with this certainty. I have also introduced a bill with Senator Hatch which provides a 50- percent across-the-board exclusion on capital gains with an increased exclusion for qualified small businesses. The bill has a dozen cosponsors, spanning the range of the Senate's political spectrum. This change in capital gains taxes should encourage capital investment, including investment in new businesses which are bringing new technologies to market, and new jobs to our work force. These efforts are particularly important in the current economic climate. Decreasing product life-cycles and increasing competition is forcing industry to focus on shorter time scales, not the longer time horizons required for high risk R&D. We must make sure that there are incentives that encourage investment in long-range, high-risk R&D. These private sector programs, however, are only a complement, not a replacement for federally funded R&D efforts. The Government's role in science and technology tends to be longer term and in areas where industry does not invest. Industry is not prepared to undertake the risk that longer term R&D entails. Private sector R&D tends to be increasingly short-term, and focused on areas where there will be a clear short-term return. We need increasing investment in both Government and private sector R&D, yet we are faced with declining private sector R&D investment and major cuts by the new Congress in Government's R&D. Both of these problems must be addressed if the United States is to retain its economic leadership. Our competitors are increasing their investments in both R&D arenas. I applaud the Institute for the Future in their efforts to research the current R&D climate and to delineate goals for the future. As partners, private industry and Government can lay the groundwork for effective investments in our future. At a recent event to introduce the report from the Institute for the Future, Dr. Mary Good, Under Secretary for Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Richard J. Kogan, president and chief operating officer, Schering-Plough Corp., made statements concerning the critical role that research and development plays in our economy. I ask that these statements be printed in the Record. The statements follow: Comments on ``The Future of America's Research-Intensive Industries,'' Prepared by the Institute for the Future (By Mary L. Good, Under Secretary for Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, July 24, 1995) First, let me say how pleased I am to have an opportunity to participate in this News Conference which announces the publication of the report entitled ``The Future of America's Research-Intensive Industries''. The Institute for the Future and the sponsors of this report are to be congratulated for their foresight and commitment to the long-term health of the U.S. economy. Clearly, the U.S. research-intensive industries have been one of the major vehicles for the country's economic growth since World War II. They have played a disproportionate role in the improvement of our standard of living, in the development of our industrial infrastructure, and particularly in establishing the United States as the world's leader in high-technology development. In many ways they have been the motivation for the creation of the world's leading higher education system because they generated the jobs that required high-quality graduate training in science and engineering. They appreciated and utilized the research output from our research universities, the national laboratories, and the mission agencies of the government, particularly Defense, NASA, and Energy. Less well recognized, they played a vital role in the success of entrepreneurial, high-tech startup companies that utilized [[Page S 12312]] the people and technology that was nurtured in their major research centers but did not meet their internal criteria for further in-house development. Many of our successful high-tech startups over the last 30 years or so can trace their ancestry back to ``parents'' or ``grandparents'' in the research-intensive companies who grew and flourished in the years after World War II. In addition, they have provided the market for thousands of small companies, first, second and third tier suppliers who have flourished over the same period of time. The success of this industry, as so capably defined by this report, has been the result of both government and business foresight in the development of a research and development infrastructure in the private sector, the government, and academia. This infrastructure provided the intellectual capital required for our industry to excel. However, it was developed at a time when the government motivation was substantially based on defense needs. The industry had a world competitive position that encouraged long-term investment in R&D that benefited it directly, and indirectly spilled over to provide great social benefit ranging from the creation of entirely new industries to the development of technology based, civilian infrastructure. As the report documents, the end of the Cold War and the rise of many able competitors all over the world have changed dramatically the position and behavior of both the government and the industry in their role in the R&D infrastructure which has sustained them over the last 50 years. The questions addressed by the report are vital to our country's future and the ability of our children and grandchildren to enjoy the same opportunities and quality of life that we have. The conclusions of the report and their implications for public policy must not be ignored. The recommendations require active government participation with the industry in working out the new paradigm for R&D infrastructure which is appropriate for the 21st century. To suggest that the solution to these problems belongs to the industry alone and that it is time for the government to provide significantly less resources and investment in this area so vital to economic growth is to declare defeat in the economic security battles that are raging around the world today. Our future depends on the realignment of a greater share of our government funded R&D effort to civilian industries; the continued support of university research, both basic and applied science and engineering; the cultivation of a core of the ``best and the brightest'' students to seek an education in science and engineering; and the encouragement of industrial R&D growth over time. The global market of today may well create the forces which cause individual companies to realign and adjust their R&D resources to be economically successful. However, those same forces may cause the United States as a country to under-invest in the future where our R&D intensive industries are world players but not the overall contributors to the nation's well-being that they have been in the past. Thus, public policy must be developed which maintains the results of our Cold War policies but which is focused on programs and resource allocation which are appropriate for the new post-Cold War environment of today. Let me conclude by commenting on each of the five recommendations for public policy listed in the conclusion of the report. Maintain federal support for basic research This is a major priority for going forward. Not only must we maintain the portfolio in the universities funded by the civilian agencies like NSF and NIH, we must continue at least the current level of support from the mission agencies like Defense, NASA, Energy, and Agriculture. This university research includes a significant amount of applied and engineering research which must not be removed on the fallacious argument that the government's role should be limited to ``basic research''. In addition, the role of a segment of the government laboratories in fundamental research must be re-examined and strengthened to provide facilities and long-term programs which support and supplement both the civilian industry and academic efforts. encourage long-term private investment for r&d An environment must be created that induces both U.S. industry and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign-owned firms to invest in R&D and high-level manufacturing within the United States. Future high-paying and intellectually challenging jobs depend on this environment. Tax and investment policies which provide these incentives must be part of any public ``technology policy''. lower government-generated risk associated with innovation Public policy must address regulatory and litigation issues so that public interests are balanced against innovation incentives. The lost value of innovations not done because of regulatory and legal disincentives must be considered in the overall context of the optimization of public protection vs. private industry activities. protect intellectual property In the market place, intellectual property is a major part of the competitive edge which justifies R&D expenditures. Without world-wide protection of that intellectual property, companies cannot capture the full value of their R&D investment through global sales with appropriate margins. As products and services become more knowledge-based and software intensive, the need for new paradigms in the protection of intellectual property will become more urgent. Clearly, public policy must focus on international trade relations as well as on domestic legislation if our companies can continue to reap the benefits of extensive R&D investments. support industry cooperation on r&d As product live cycles continue to decrease and private industry spends less on enabling and emerging pre-competitive technologies, the need for better bridges between university and government research and the industrial sector become more urgent. Joint ventures and government-private partnerships provide rapid technology transfer and continue to technological infrastructure that has served us so well in the past. These activities must not be lost by ideological attacks on so-called ``corporate welfare'' and arguments about the government's role in industrial innovation. Programs which have been developed over the past five or six years such as the Advanced Technology Program in the Department of Commerce and the CRADA programs in the Department of Energy must be strengthened and continued. Overall a 5-10% portion of the federal R&D budget should be reserved for these partnership programs. They should encourage both government and academic interaction with industrial R&D and foster the kind of relationships where emerging technologies can develop and spin off new industries in a competitive time frame and new enabling technologies can be rapidly assimilated by the industry. The response to these recommendations by today's policy makers and legislators will determine the quality of our country's future. The investments called for must be made in an era of great need to reduce the overall federal deficit and where the need for investments in education and continued support for the needy and the elderly must be found. Thus it is a time when a thoughtful review of government R&D activities is in order to prioritize the expenditures to meet the recommendations of today's report. Current budget resolutions in the House and Senate project a decrease of at least one-third of all federal government R&D expenditures by the year 2002 and a prohibition on all R&D partnership activities where the federal government funds any part of an industrial firm's civilian technology development. The appropriation process which is now underway for 1996 budgets would indicate that the plan is on track. Some $5-6 billion of the $34 billion or so of civilian R&D have been identified for reduction and most of the newer partnership programs have been severely reduced or eliminated. The Advanced Technology Program has been eliminated, the Technology Reinvestment Program in the Defense Department has almost been eliminated and the DOE CRADA budget has been reduced to a few million dollars. The report before us outlines why the industry will not and can not replace these activities. The discontinuity which will be caused by these budget actions, the consequent loss of thousands of R&D jobs, and the effect it will have on academic research departments will not be amenable to ``quick fixes'' next year or in the foreseeable future. We can only hope that this report and other current analyses will convince the public and the Congress that this approach is suicidal. A balanced budget will only be achieved by both government reductions and strategic investments in labor, capital and technology which will provide the economic growth and jobs of the future. This report goes a long way to explaining in clear terms why that is true. Thank you. ``The Future of America's Research-Intensive Industries'' (By Richard J. Kogan, President and Chief Operating Officer, Schering- Plough Corp.) Members of the Administration and Congress, distinguished scientists and professors, ladies and gentlemen: Good morning. As the Institute's researchers have noted, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology are one of this nation's ``top eight'' R&D-based industries examined for their ability to continue their innovation track record. Certainly, major challenges lie ahead for our industry. With biopharmaceutical industry R&D costs rising, it's increasingly difficult to repeat our previous innovation achievements that have made America the worldwide technological leader in medicine. Just as we cannot return to yesterday's markets, we cannot replicate our former R&D expenditures. Growth in industry R&D spending today is less than half the level of the early 1980s. Schering-Plough in the 15-year period 1979-1994 spent almost $500 million to develop our recombinant alpha interferon, plunging ahead even when it initially appeared the drug would help only a handful of cancer patients. It took nearly 14 years of work before we saw a penny of return on that investment. Today, such an effort might not be made-- nor our subsequent discovery that the drug can treat 16 cancer and viral diseases. For pharmaceutical and biotech firms, the burning issue now is not only whether we can continue bringing products to patients that treat unconquered diseases, but whether we can continue covering the expenditure for leading-edge research. Our industry is currently responsible for more than 90 percent of all new U.S. drug discoveries. [[Page S 12313]] Today's diseases--Alzheimer's, AIDS, heart and kidney disease, prostate cancer and arthritis--are far more complex than those successfully treated in the past. Moreover, many of today's most prevalent diseases--primarily chronic and degenerative conditions--are at the high-cost stage in the innovation cycle. If we cut investment in medical progress today, the consequence may be irrevocable and society may rue that decision for years to come. The annual medical costs of only seven major uncured diseases account for about half of today's health care bill. However, many of those diseases are within reach of effective pharmaceutical control or cure. As biomedical technology progresses to that point, the total cost of treating these major ailments should drop sharply. If the cycle of innovation is disrupted, we run the risk of being trapped with today's higher-cost, less-effective options. Today's rapidly changing health care market signals the continuing sense of urgency for optimal patient care and cost containment. By the same token, we must constantly remind ourselves that medical innovation is the most viable, long- term solution for cost-effective quality care--as the findings of the Institute study attest. In 1995, an urgent task before U.S. policymakers should be to assure that the path of innovation remains open, unobstructed and attractive to investors. And, that statement applies across the aboard--from our industry that has cured polio, tuberculosis, measles and diphtheria to our fellow industries that have brought the world the laser, fiber optics, lightweight alloys, integrated circuits, the CAT scanner, and that have taken us into outer space. Thank you.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment offered by Senators Reid, Chafee, Lautenberg, myself, and others to partially restore Endangered Species Act funding. It is understandable in this era of budget balancing that endangered species programs take their fair share of cuts. However, the committee report provides far deeper than average cuts to endangered species programs. Whereas most programs have endured 15- to 20-percent cuts, endangered species program cuts are far greater--as much as 50 percent in some cases or zeroed out completely. I don't think this is necessary or advisable at the present time. A number of endangered species recovery programs are in progress and at a critical stage. They depend on actions by Federal, State, local, and private interests that will create and implement the most cost- effective and flexible solutions to species recovery. Our amendment provides a partial restoration of cuts to U.S. Fish and Wildlife programs that help State agencies through grants and assistance; technical assistance to private landowners; prelisting agreements that nip species declines in the bud and avoid the need for regulatory action; consultations between agencies; and habitat conservation plans that are now the preferred State-local-private approach for species recovery in complex cases. Funds in these areas are designed to reduce headaches for landowners and affected agencies of Federal, State, and local government. This amendment does not change the committee moratorium on listings of new species or new critical habitat designation--even though I strongly disagree with this moratorium. If we pull the rug out from the recovery programs in progress--those that have already been the subject of extensive public hearings and economic analysis required under the law--we will only make it more difficult and expensive to enact them in the future. The irony of this is that we hurt the very people and organizations that these funding cuts may have inadvertently been designed to protect--private landowners, State, and local agencies. We have had three very extensive reauthorization hearings in the last month on the Endangered Species Act. It is noteworthy that we have discovered very substantial common ground among many diverse interests on many issues. These include the need for positive incentives for those responsible for implementing on-the-ground programs, and the need for more State and local delegation. The amendment we offer today provides a partial restoration of funding for exactly these purposes. These funds will be highly leveraged by State, local, and private funds, and these depend on a certain amount of Federal coordination and seed money. The old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is certainly operative in the case of this amendment: A relatively modest amount of funding in these few areas for the Fish and Wildlife Service and their State and local partners will ensure that we avoid headaches and irreversible losses in the future. If we do not move forward and honor our practical and ethical commitments to recovery programs already in progress, particularly those at critical stages, we will be abandoning a pledge that I firmly believe the American people have asked us repeatedly to honor. By cutting funds that are designed to resolve conflicts and provide State and local delegation and solutions, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. By restoring funds, at least partially, we stay ahead of the curve and give ourselves, our landowners, and our declining species of plants and animals a fighting chance. I think that we deserve it. I ask colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this as a sensible, prudent, and necessary step.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the late violinist Josef Gingold and his family. Mr. Gingold was a world-renowned violinist and a music professor at Indiana University who selflessly devoted his life to teaching music. His distinguished career in the musical arts and his devotion to teaching serves as an example of a life of tireless dedication. His legacy continues; many of his students have gone on to careers as conductors, musicians, and teachers in major symphonies and schools throughout the world. He also built the program at Indiana University's School of Music to become recognized internationally as one of the most respected curriculums for the world's next generation of violinists. The Gingold family is a model of strong morals and family values in their cohesiveness and unity in crisis. Despite having encountered struggles since Mr. Gingold's passing, they have shown dignity and perseverence in coming together to grieve and to console one another. Mr. Gingold's son and daughter-in-law, George and Anne Gingold, who are residents of the State of Connecticut, have graciously donated a collection of Mr. Gingold's books, music, letters, pictures, competition notes, and other materials to be available to teachers, musicians, and historians at the Library of Congress. Josef Gingold lived a life that should be an example to all of us. He loved and provided for his family while as a professor of music at Indiana University. He will long be remembered as a man who touched many and helped countless others through his dedication and devotion to music and his passion for teaching.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Which may be a substantial period of time. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I have some remarks that I would like to make on the work components of the two major bills, the Dole-Packwood bill and the Daschle-Mikulski-Breaux bill. But the twist of fate has put me in the position to be looking across the Chamber at my good friend and partner in some other good causes. And the question of, Where is the President? And I do, in fairness, want to respond to that question. The Senator from Pennsylvania has discussed the role that the President's discussion of welfare reform had in the 1992 campaign. And I agree with the Senator from Pennsylvania; it was a pivotal role. It was the defining element of the campaign. And may I say, as a Democrat, how proud I was that we had a Presidential candidate in 1992 who broke with the past, who was not defensive about the status quo, who was prepared to take on some interest groups, frankly, within the Democratic Party who had always said, ``Do not touch welfare.'' I mean, if you touch welfare you are really talking about beating up on welfare recipients. For your own political advantage--In this case, I think the President stood up and stood out and said very clearly, welfare as we know it has to change. Welfare as we know it has to change. And I really believe that, had the President not taken that leadership stand, we would not be in the process of considering and having a genuine opportunity to adopt welfare reform. We may disagree--obviously we do disagree on some of the specifics. But I think that the President's position in 1992, and his following of that position since then, has created a bipartisan consensus in favor of welfare reform. And his principles as enunciated in the campaign were to create time limits, to require work, to give the States flexibility, to deal with teenage pregnancy and to increase the child support enforcement role. Mr. President, last summer the President introduced a bill, proposed legislation, that would follow through, implement those principles that he enunciated in the campaign. I want to say to my friend, and my colleagues, that the President has worked very closely with the Democratic Senate leadership, and I believe the House leadership, to fashion the proposal that is before the Senate now or will be when introduced as a substitute by Senator Daschle and Senator Breaux and Senator Mikulski, which is the so-called Work First proposal. The President has joined forces in that sense with the Senate Democratic leadership. He has unequivocally endorsed the proposal. His endorsement is part of the reason why there is a remarkable unity among Senate Democrats. I remember the old Will Rogers line, ``I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.'' That is true. Often that is the case. But in this case it is not true. That is to say, the Democrats are united behind the principles that the President enunciated in 1992. I will say one thing concerning the question that continues to resonate toward me in those luminescent colors of blue and yellow across the Chamber, which is this: that President Clinton has not just spoken on this issue, he has acted. He has used the authority that the law gives him as President to grant waivers to the States, more waivers, granted more rapidly, than any President before him. More than half the States now have waivers. And the truth is that in the midst of all of the discussion and rhetoric and contests going on here, the real work of welfare reform in the midst of the parameters that we set at the Federal level is going on at the State level. They are experimenting. And one of the things I hope we will show in this debate is some sense of humility when we are dealing with the lives of millions of people in a system that we agree has gone wrong, to understand that while we know what is wrong with the system, we, in most cases, do not have a great reason to have a great sense of confidence about exactly what will make it better. The States, in their experiments, are going to help us do that. And the President has encouraged that. And this proposal builds on that. So I do not know that I have totally satisfied the interrogatory alleged by the Senator from Pennsylvania, but I feel very, very secure in saying that on this issue President Clinton was out in front early, formed a consensus, and has been directly involved in the work that brings us, hopefully in the near future, to the adoption of genuine welfare reform. Mr. President, this is an important debate. There have been some very thoughtful statements made in the first couple of days of the debate which showed that the people really thought about this issue and understand the importance of it to those who are on welfare, to those of us who pay for welfare, and really to the country, and to the people's attitude toward Government, because the fact is welfare has become a symbol, in some senses a caricature, of all that has gone wrong with our Government, a well-intentioned program created in the 1930's, as we all know, to help widows, particularly widows of coal miners, then becomes an enormous program that takes basic American values--work, reward for work, family, loyalty to family, and personal responsibility--and turns them on their head. And in doing so, builds up an enormous bureaucracy, a kind of institutionalization of a lot of values gone astray. So the debate here has been a good one. There is obviously a very, very broad consensus supporting reform. There are winds in the willows here. There are echoes in the Chamber that suggest it may not be possible to finish this debate this week. I am not surprised at that. And I do not think it is a bad sign. [[Page S 11835]] Mr. President, it took us 60 years--60 years--for our welfare system to become the mess it is. We are not going to solve it in 6 days. We are not going to solve it right in 6 days. So, I hope that we will begin the debate, lay down some basic proposals, and then continue when we come back to do it the right way. We all agree, I think, that the current system fails to demand responsibility and provide work opportunities. It financially rewards parents who do not work, who do not marry, but who do have children out of wedlock. By doing so, our current welfare system demeans our most cherished values and really deepens society's worst problems, including the problem of violent crime which has cut at the fabric of trust that used to underlay the sense of community that was so basically part of American life. Gone, the victim of violent crime. Mr. President, there is, as I say, this broad agreement that our system must change, and I believe that there is also bipartisan agreement that one can see through the discussion on the goals of welfare reform. Democrats and Republicans agree that the welfare system should focus first and foremost on moving people into the work force. A reform system, obviously, should also combat the causes of welfare dependency, particularly the growth in out-of-wedlock pregnancies among teenagers. I hope to return to the floor on some other occasion to talk about this epidemic problem the Senator from New York has foreseen, has documented, has spoken of with such insight. May I just say the obvious, which is that if we can deal effectively with out-of-wedlock pregnancies, if we can create a national effort to try to cut down the number of pregnancies, this problem that has gone wild, we will thereby cut down the welfare rolls. The welfare rolls are composed of children in great part who were born out of wedlock. They are, therefore, dependent children. It is a child or children living with the mother and no father, or at least no father who has assumed responsibility and gone through marriage and lives legally in the house. So I hope we will act on this shared impulse of reaction to this terrible problem. The system reform should reinforce, not undermine, our shared values and a reformed system should fulfill our national commitment, in the midst of all the changes, that we try to provide protections for our poorest children, remembering that they are the innocent victims of the errors, misdeeds, irresponsibility, very often, of their parents. So when we say ``entitlement,'' there is no entitlement, as the Senator from New York has pointed out. It is up to the States whether they want to deal with the problems of the poorest.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will be proud to yield.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Senator from New York. I am proud to be in his company. That is the truth. It is up to the States to decide that they wish to enter this system the Federal Government has created. It is really the choice of the State. There is no coercion here. But once they decide, they have to play by the rules, and one of the rules--it certainly seems like a good one, and I would guess it is a rule that would be accepted in principle by a great majority of people in America--and that is we care for the children. I hope whatever system we adopt provides that level of guarantee for a decent life for our children in this country. The pending legislation, as amended by S. 1120, the Republican leader's bill, will create a welfare system that I believe will fail ultimately to meet its primary objective, which is to put people to work in great numbers, to get them off of welfare. It fails to give the States the right incentives and resources to put people to work, and I am afraid that it ignores a lot of what we have learned about what works and what does not in getting people off welfare. Finally, I do not think it holds States accountable for their success, that is I do not think that it gives them incentives appropriately to succeed or that it creates standards to measure in a fair and reasonable, rational way what success really means. Mr. President, for the remainder of the time speaking this afternoon, I want to focus in on the work requirements. We know a lot about what it takes to get people to work. In 1988, Congress passed the Family Support Act under the skilled and, may I say, unique leadership of Senator Moynihan. The Job Opportunities Basic Skills Program, which has come to be known as JOBS, established by the act, sought to provide training to people on welfare to prepare them for work. Evaluations of the JOBS Program that have been conducted have shown that the programs have had some success; they have begun to make a difference. Obviously, they have suffered from a lack of funding in some substantial degree, but welfare-to-work programs have increased work participation. The Government education and training programs have not yet moved large numbers of welfare recipients permanently into the work force, and so we hope in this bill to try to do better. But I do want to stress that it is critically important that we do not dismiss the JOBS Program in that sense, but that we build on what we have learned from the JOBS Program. Our experience with that program has taught us several important lessons, one of which is that programs that are focused on education and training, on investing in human capital, have had some results. Programs that have, however, emphasized the immediate work experience along with education and training have seemed to be more successful. What research is showing us is that providing an initial connection to the work force, a step on the first rung on the ladder of work, then to be combined with training and education, seems to be an approach that gives us some hope of making a welfare recipient find a way off welfare and into work. What we have learned from the Family Support Act is that education and training are critical to continue to climb up the ladder to self- sufficiency. But it is Work First, which is the title of the Democratic bill, that will spur a recipient on and improve her life--it seems obvious, but it is important in this area of human frailty and profound human problems to test what seems obvious. It means that a recipient should, whenever possible, first take a job--any job--that is offered her to discover what her abilities are and then to be helped to learn the basic skills that most employers value, some of them very basic but critically important skills, like showing up to work on time, having good work habits, working hard, notifying employers of absences, communicating well with coworkers. The traditional education system has failed most of our welfare recipients. Education and training, therefore, must play a critical role in helping them succeed in the work force. But we have to connect recipients to work and then help them succeed once they are in that work environment. And that is what this bill, which Senators Daschle, Breaux, and Mikulski have introduced, and many of us have cosponsored, has focused on. Employers--and we have to listen to the people who are going to give these welfare recipients jobs--employers say over and over again that it is not necessarily formally trained workers that they need, but dependable workers, workers that they can help to train along with Government-supported training programs. As one employer said to me, ``I can train an employee to take apart and reassemble a widget, but I cannot train her to show up to work on time.'' So programs that have taken a work-first approach, we think, have had the most encouraging results. There has been a lot of discussion here, and I need not go on at length about the GAIN program in Riverside County, CA, which is one such positive example. The program focuses on quickly placing people in private-sector jobs and [[Page S 11836]] emphasizes low-paying jobs are an opportunity to start up a career ladder and should not be turned down. Mr. President, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. evaluated the program and found a percentage of the recipients employed was 13.6 percent higher than in a control group. The JOBS programs run in Atlanta, Grand Rapids, and other places, provide additional evidence of the importance of this strategy that emphasizes rapid job entry. Mr. President, we have also learned that private investment in support agencies can effectively move welfare recipients into the work force. So I would say that the three characteristics that we find from successful programs are, first, that each assesses the needs and skills of each of its clients individually and assumes that they want to work. Second, each program bypasses traditional education and training and, instead, puts its clients to work as quickly as possible. But then, obviously, it has to supplement that with the education and training. Third, successful programs do form strong links with local employers and work hard to maintain those links with the local employers, who are the source of the jobs. Another example of the private sector agency that has done some successful work is America Works, which has been working in Connecticut for a period of time. It is a for-profit placement and support organization that has helped over 5,000 welfare recipients find full- time private sector jobs in New York, Connecticut, and Indianapolis. It places 60 percent of those in the program into jobs, and of that percent, 68 percent are hired permanently at an average wage of $15,000 per year, including benefits; 75 percent are still off of welfare 18 months later, at a cost to the Government of $5,400 per placement. America Works is cost effective, especially when compared to other public sector only programs. Mr. President, we have to be honest here and say that successful programs are still the exception and not the rule. That is the difficult challenge that we face. States need more incentives to move recipients into the labor market. We have to move the system away as we all want to, I am sure, from one that focuses on writing checks to one that focuses on getting people into employment and providing the necessary backup and education and training to keep them there. We need to change the incentives in the current system and to reward States, administrators, and caseworkers for placing recipients in work. There is simply not enough incentive in the current system, or may I say in the Republican leadership bill, that rewards States directly for meeting the most important goal of all, which is to place and keep a welfare recipient in a job--a private sector, unsubsidized job. Mr. President, the Republican leadership bill does take one important step, I think, in the right direction. That is, to give States the flexibility to design innovative work-based programs. But flexibility is not synonymous with reform, and therein lies the fundamental flaw of the Republican leadership bill. The problem with S. 1120 is that it gives States flexibility, but without the proper incentives to do the right thing, without the resources, without the accountability, without the measurement of success. The bill sets States up, I am afraid, to fail to meet the fundamental goal that the bill establishes, which is to help establish self-sufficiency through work. Then it lets States off the hook when they fail. Mr. President, S. 1120 looks tough on work, but ultimately I am afraid it will not deliver on that toughness, because it does not give the States the resources they need to help put welfare recipients to work. There are some similarities, which is encouraging, to the Democratic Work First proposal. One is that it requires States to ensure that an increasingly high percentage of their welfare caseload is involved in work activities. By the year 2000, States must ensure that 50 percent of people receiving welfare are working in a private sector job for at least 30 hours a week, or are participating in vocational education. But I am afraid when you look closely at S. 1120, the Republican bill, you have to conclude that the States are going to have a very hard time meeting those work requirements, that 50 percent goal, 50 percent of welfare recipients to work, because the States simply cannot afford to meet them. States will not have the money they need to pay for child care and other support for single parents participating in part-time work. The Republican leadership block grant proposal freezes Federal support for cash assistance in child care at $16.8 billion--actually, less than what we are spending now, even as it requires States to move more than three times as many individuals into work activities. Mr. President, we all want to save money on welfare. But it seems to me that we should learn the lessons of business. In so many cases, you do not save money, you do not turn out a better service, unless you invest a little bit. That is exactly what we have to do to achieve longer range savings for a better service, a better program. Today, as required by the Family Support Act, about 400,000 people are participating in mandatory training or work programs for at least 20 hours a week. That is no small accomplishment. Under the Republican leadership bill, by the year 2000, 1.3 million individuals would have to be in work activities for not 20, but at least 30 hours per week. So the Republican leadership proposal triples the number of people who will need child care, for instance, but adds no new funds; it basically triples the number of people who will have to be in these mandatory work programs for 10 more hours a week, but asks the States to do it with effectively less and less money. The unfunded costs, as estimated by the Department of HHS, and roughly, I gather, confirmed by CBO, the unfunded cost of these work requirements in S. 1120 is a whopping $23 billion over 7 years. The State of Connecticut, my State, alone would have to spend an additional $300 million. Mr. President, I ask, where will the States get that money? I am going to suggest on this chart that they have four choices to satisfy the goal of getting 50 percent of welfare recipients into work. One is to raise State and local taxes. That is not a very pleasant prospect for the Governors and State legislators, and I doubt they will do it. Second is to deny assistance to needy families, either to make the welfare eligibility requirements more restrictive or to cut down the benefit level. Third is to cut back on child care support, meager as it may be in most places, and, therefore, force people to go to work, but to do so at the cost of leaving their children home alone, unattended. The fourth choice is not to go ahead with reform, not to achieve the 50 percent welfare-to-work goal that is set out in S. 1120, and the punishment is a 5-percent reduction of the block grant. Well, it seems to me, we talk a lot about market incentives in this Chamber, and I am all for them. We are going to give the States-- speaking in macro terms--a choice here. The choice is to spend the $23 billion-plus over the 7 years for what I would call the ``unfunded mandate,'' or to lose what amounts to $6 billion, which is the cumulative total of a 5-percent reduction for no reform. I am afraid that just on the basis of fiscal incentive, the system set up in S. 1120 will encourage States not to achieve the work goals in their proposal and, therefore, to take the relatively more attractive $6 billion hit. Mr. President, let me offer one final chart and then I will close because I see my friend from Missouri here. By contrast, I think the Work First proposal of Senators Daschle, Breaux, and others of us, really does do the job and understands that you have to spend some money to save some money here. It funds the work requirement through spending cuts within existing welfare programs. It understands that you are not going to get people to go to work--and these are people who need some special help to get out there and go to work--without some money. Second, Mr. President, the Senate Democratic leadership proposal, which really is welfare reform, builds on a successful experience in the State of Iowa--and a few other States have tried it--which is when welfare recipients come in to apply, from day one, they undergo a work assessment profile, a work assessment test that is done on them. And they are asked to sign a contract. [[Page S 11837]] In other words, we are not just going to give them a check: Come in, show you meet the basic requirements, write a check, and that is that. The check is no longer unconditional. The check requires something of the recipient to meet her part of what we call the parent empowerment contract. That goes from day one. Part of that contract is to accept any job offer. Sometimes you have a situation where people say that is not good enough for me, that is a minimum wage job. The point is, we found if you start with a minimum wage job, you work your way up. Third, as others have said, the Democratic proposal provides child care. Fourth, an important part that Senator Breaux and I may build on in an amendment later in the debate, the Democratic proposal provides bonuses to States for private-sector job placements. The amendment to the Republican leadership bill will take 3, 4, 5 percent successively from the $16.8 billion in the bill and put it into a special fund that will be redistributed to the States based on the number of people they get off of welfare and into private-sector jobs. I think that is the kind of incentive that can make these work requirements really work. Finally, Mr. President, it is important to remember that welfare as we have known it for 60 years is first and foremost a program to protect the lives of children. Nine million of the 14 million welfare recipients are kids--9 million. Helping parents receive self-sufficiency through work will help kids. Children growing up in a home with a working parent have a much more positive environment, positive role model, and less poverty. Requiring work breaks the vicious cycle that is creating such--for want of a better term--an underclass in our society. That is why Senator Daschle's Work First proposal demands that people who are receiving benefits work. I hope that the proposal that I have described will assist the debate and, in whole or in part, draw bipartisan support. I think it deserves it. I hope my colleagues will agree with me that it is really through holding States accountable for their record at placing people in private-sector jobs that we will genuinely achieve welfare reform and improve the plight of these millions of children who are born to poverty with the odds stacked against them as they go forward in life. The greatest barrier to equal opportunity in our society today is poverty. Too often, that barrier has been made even more rigid by a welfare system that sends all the wrong messages to people in our society. I hope we together, Republicans and Democrats, side by side as this debate goes forward, can finally and effectively reform that system. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, responding to the Senator from Massachusetts, and I thank him for his kind words and for his question which I think puts a finger on something I am very concerned about, the answer to his question is yes, I am concerned. It seems to me there are two great problems pressing in our society today. One is the problem of people caught in the cycle of poverty-- usually people on welfare for whom the current system has failed. We want to change that. We want to give those people incentives, training, and a reason to go to work. Second, we have a whole group of people in our society who are working-class, middle-class families who have been dislocated for one reason or another--defense downsizing, changes in the economy, the economy becoming more high tech, more information-age oriented--and they are profoundly unsettled and worried about their ability to provide for their families in the future. There are a whole set of programs that we have built up, this Congress has built up, over succeeding administrations, supported by both parties, to try to provide essential assistance to those working middle-class families to help retrain them and to get them back to work. What we are trying to do here in the welfare reform proposal is to create a new effective program to help people at the bottom, to help them up from the bottom and get them into the work force. It seems to me to take from the working family program and to combine it with trying to get the welfare people to work will mean that both programs are ultimately going to be underfunded and each group will suffer. Each group really needs not to suffer but to be helped. I hope as this debate goes on, I say to my friend from Massachusetts, we can work together across the aisle to make sure there is enough money here to make the promise of work and the requirement of work real.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, first, I would like to ask unanimous consent that Cindy Baldwin, who is a fellow in my office this year, be granted the privileges of the floor for the remainder of the debate on welfare reform.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Privilege of the Floor

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I must say that I do not understand the opposition to this program that the Senator from Idaho and I and the Senator from Colorado have sponsored. We have the model for this in the private sector. It is the Eximbank, and it works very well to put American companies on a level playing field and protect American jobs. Look, if somehow we were on the verge of achieving disarmament worldwide, I would say we should not be the only country out there selling weapons. The fact is, there is an active arms market worldwide. Why tie one hand behind our manufacturers when they go out to compete with other countries' manufacturers for contracts? The fact is that we have a lot on the line. We have some defense companies that could close up and make our country less secure in the future, undercut our industrial base. The fact is, we could lose thousands of jobs without this kind of support. So I do not apologize. I think this is just giving the Department of Defense an asset to protect defense companies and the people who work for them and put us on an even playing field with other manufacturers around the world. My friend from Idaho is absolutely right. Everything done here must be licensed under the Export Administration. There is no danger of proliferation in that sense. And I come back and say, Mexico was mentioned by the Senator from Arkansas, Chile was mentioned. They simply would not qualify. Of those 37 countries, the program mechanics are structured so that defaults are very, very unlikely. I think this bill is good for America's national security and good for those who work in America and will not at all increase the proliferation of weapons throughout the world. I thank the Chair. I hope my colleagues will vote against the amendment.