Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute, the remainder of my time, to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Pastor].

Mr. McDERMOTT. As printed in the Record?

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I am sure you will support the amendment.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Reclaiming my time, that is a value judgment about these young women which I do not think you have a right to make. I do not think you have any evidence to support that.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Reclaiming my time, what you do is take away the State's ability to decide with the limited amount of money they are now going to have; the State of Washington is now working on a budget, thinking what they are going to get from us. Suddenly they are going to get a cut. They are going to have to go back in session and decide with a limited amount of money how they are going to deal with this. One of the things you are saying to them is, ``You cannot give cash benefits.'' I object to that. If you are going to give limited money to the States, let them have the full responsibility.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I just have to respond. The gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. McCrery] is one of my favorites on the other side, because he is real honest. He stands up, and he says right out, ``We, the Federal Government, have decided that the States cannot give money.'' Now, I say to the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. McCrery], that is micromanaging what the Governors and the State legislatures can do, and you and I do not disagree on that, I guess. We are telling them, ``You cannot do it.'' We are reaching down into those State legislatures and making that decision for them. My view, and the amendment that I offered in committee, was to say let the States decide what they are going to do. We are giving them a lot less money. I listened to all of these people say we are giving more in this program and giving more in that program and giving more in this. How are you saving $70 billion if you are giving more in each section of the bill? I mean, it sort of defies logic that you can give more everywhere and not in the end wind up taking it away from somewhere.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remaining time. Mr. Chairman, I think what people need to understand is this is a fig leaf. After you slash in the rescissions bill the WIC Program to bits, then I get the gentlewoman from Washington standing up here and saying the WIC Program is a great program when she voted and all of the rest of you voted to slash that program. The next thing we come to is food stamps. It is a voucher program but in this bill you want to get rid of it. Now this is a fig leaf on the issue of whether you are going to punish women who get pregnant. People who get pregnant are not doing it to get 25 extra bucks in the State of Texas. People are getting pregnant for a whole lot of reasons, but it is not because they want to get more money out of the system, and when you punish the woman you are punishing the kids. And there is no way around it. This whole bill is directed at punishing children. And I say we ought to vote against this, and of course against the bill, because this bill is unfair to kids. If you want to pick on adults you ought to pick on adults some other way, but not pick on adults and think you are not picking on kids. You are picking on them; you are going to hurt them. Anything that takes away in those first years what kids need hurts, stunts their development. You are going to pay for it in the long run. It is like the Fram commercial, you either pay for it up front or you are going to pay for it forever. I hear all of those people talk about the costs of prisoners and prisons, $27,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year. You do not mind that because that is not in this year's budget. That is in about the year 2015 when you pick up this kind of stuff. I say that this kind of punishment should not go on on this floor. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Rangel].

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida [Mrs. Thurman].

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Arkansas [Mrs. Lincoln]. (Mrs. LINCOLN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is a very interesting amendment that the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith] brings forward. It raises a very interesting question. He spends a lot of time telling us that people do not have babies to get more money out of the welfare system. My understanding that this whole business of a cap is designed to deal with these people who say, ``You know, I need a few more bucks, I think I'll go have a baby.'' Anybody who would say a dumb thing like that has never had a child. In Texas, you get a second child, you get $25. I think if you asked most women if it is worth going through having a child for $25, it is pretty hard to find anybody who would say that that is the reason why they have a child. Most people get pregnant not because they choose to a second time, failure of birth control, whatever, and the child is there. Then to say, well, let's give a voucher. Why is it that you will give a voucher to them but you will not give them the public assistance to actually rent an apartment with an extra bedroom? You are not going to let them have any cash. You are going to say, ``Well, we know that you need diapers and we know that you need formula and we know you need these things.'' This is micromanagement of the very worst sort. You say to the States, ``Here's your money. You decide what you are going to do.'' And then in this bill, you turn around and you want to start micromanaging down to the level of the number of diapers that a woman needs to buy for a child. That in my opinion is precisely what you say you do not want to do but you wind up doing it and kids are the ones who suffer from this. This whole idea that somehow children born to kids, and I say kids because they are under 18, that those children should not be affected, that they are somehow going to have the money taken away from them, or that they are not wedded to somebody, somehow we are not going to care for them is the guts of what is wrong with this whole proposal. You have people here who are simply poor. Those people need some money to deal with the situation. But you are now saying, ``Well, we've put this cap on, it doesn't make any sense, but let's put a little provision in here for vouchers.'' I think despite the argument of the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith], if I were a young woman and I thought, ``Well, I've got one baby and I've got another one, now I'm pregnant, but I'm not going to have any money to take care of this kid, I think I'm going to get an abortion.'' What would prevent a woman from thinking that? Seems to me if she is halfway reasonable, she would say, ``Why not get an abortion? There's no way that I can take care of this kid. My parents don't have any money, I was raised in poverty,'' whatever. We assume that all these children are going to go home to middle- class families making $75,000 a year, I guess. When you do this kind of stuff, you are simply promoting abortion. Those of you who care about abortion and want to prevent it ought to be looking at this family cap business and all this chicanery that is in this amendment to try to avoid that issue are simply promoting that. I think that you ought to reconsider this and vote ``no'' on this amendment.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I rise in opposition, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Ford].

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. McDERMOTT. A motion to adjourn, Mr. Chairman, is always in order. It is always a privileged motion.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Did the Chair say the first amendment to be voted on is the amendment offered by the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Archer]?

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, to extend the debate, I move to strike the last word, and ask unanimous consent to merge that additional time with this time I am currently controlling.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, three times in the Gospel the story is told about our Lord, the children being brought to him, and the story is, of course, that the parents are trying to bring the kids to Christ, and Christ said, ``Suffer the little children to come unto me as long as your mother is over 18 and she's married.'' Now, Mr. Chairman, my colleagues know that is not true, and this bill is the most cruel and shortsighted view in public policy I have seen in 25 years. The first 2 years of life are the years when children develop what they are going to be for the rest of their life. I say, If you don't take care of them with Medicaid, if you don't take care of them with health care and food supplements during that period of time, you doom them to a life of difficulties in this society. Mr. Chairman, many of our Republican colleagues would like us to believe that most welfare recipients get on welfare because they do not want to work, and they stay on because welfare recipients are just being lazy. I think it is just the opposite. I think most people get on welfare due to unforeseen circumstances, and those that remain do so not because they are lazy, but because they are not smart enough to know--they are smart enough to know it is not the best option for them. Welfare recipients know their option. They know if they work, even with the earned income tax credit, that just does not make it. Let me lay out the example: A young woman with three kids goes out and gets a job at a gas station making the minimum wage, $4.25 an hour. She works all year. She makes $8,500. With the earned income tax credit on top of that, of $3,000, she makes about $11,500. The poverty line in this country established by the government and accepted by all for a family of four in 1995 is $15,000. Now that is $3,500 more than she makes. If she works the whole year, she will have 75 percent of the poverty line. She will not have health care benefits. She will not have day care. Mr. Chairman, to say to her, ``Leave your kids at home, lady; go on out, and get a job, and don't have a chance to take your kids to the doctor,'' simply is not a reasonable thing to expect of anybody. Now this situation is not unusual. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mr. Chairman, 4.2 million people in this country, paid by the hour, earn at below the minimum wage. Furthermore, the percentage of working families that are poor has risen. In 1976 the percentage of families with children that had a parent working that was below the poverty line was 8 percent. In 1993, Mr. Chairman, it is up to 11 percent. Now the Republican response in this bill? This bill is a bad bill as it sits here, responds to that situation to make welfare look so mean and so severe that makes working full time at 75 percent of poverty look like a good deal. I think that instead of making welfare tougher we should make welfare or work pay. That means we have to raise the minimum wage. Mr. Chairman, I would oppose the bill as it stands.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, does the rule we have just adopted make in order general debate on H.R. 4 or H.R. 1214?