Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, if I may, I do not see any Senators seeking recognition, nor have I been told of any. We have no requests for speakers on this side.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes, Senator Thurmond would know. But it was assumed that it was constitutional. He thought it would be an issue to make it unconstitutional. It took another 80 years for the Court to find that it was in there all along. I think you can read that clause. It says simply: ``Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.'' [[Page S 13519]] The Church of England is an established church. There were established churches in most of the colonies. I may be mistaken and probably am. I think several colonies had several established churches. That means public moneys go to the maintenance of the clergy and of the houses of worship. It was never, in any way, thought that you could not have parochial schools receive public moneys. They did in New York, until the 1920's when, under an informal arrangement whereby State- owned lands in the western part of the State--and I suspect Maine has the same arrangement--were sold for different purposes and used. It was a decentralized situation, and I regret to say--meaning no discredit and hoping not, in any way, to offend anybody--the Baptists were found to be padding their payrolls. So reform had to take place. Albany took over the disbursement of these funds. They were called public schools. The issue arose as to what Bible would be used, and, of course, the majority wanted a King James Bible and the Catholics wanted a Bible of their own, and so the Catholic schools commenced their independent existence to this day. But the term ``public school,'' or ``PS'' in the way of usage in Manhattan, comes from that point. I just hope these comments--I cannot expect them to carry great weight across the lawn to our former neighbors in the Court, but it is a fact that the establishment clause contemplated a form of Government- supported religious institutions. That was normal in most of the world then and had nothing to do with day care centers, or halfway houses, or orphanages, or schools the way it may today. So I think the Senator has a powerful point, a useful measure, and I thank him for being patient with my not necessarily precisely accurate recollection.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I rise in fervent support of the proposal by the Senator from Maine. It seems to me to anticipate difficulties which can be readily resolved if they are in fact anticipated. It is clear that the Senate understood what it was doing and indeed provided additional language to resolve issues that might arise. I do not want, in any way, to complicate matters, but I would like to state that it is a matter of record--or so I believe--that the establishment clause has come into play in areas such as the ones we are dealing with only quite recently--only in the 20th century. I believe it was not until the 20th century that the Court held that public aid to religious schools was unconstitutional. Indeed, I think it may only be in the second half of the 20th century. I note for the first--the longest--century of the Constitution, it was assumed otherwise. President Grant, contemplating running for a third term, addressed a meeting or a gathering--or an encampment of the Army, I think they would have said, of the Tennessee, which was held out in Iowa, and proposed a constitutional amendment that would prohibit aid to Catholic schools. It would not have said Catholic per se.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am sorry. I wanted to speak. The Senator was on the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Not absolute.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. If the Senator would yield for a question. I think he would find in the main the correlation is inverse. The lower the benefit, the higher the ratio.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Hippocrates on ``Epidemics.''

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am going to have to be away from the floor for awhile now, but I want to say that the remarks of the Senator from Indiana are the most compelling and thoughtful and, in a certain sense, I hope, perfecting of any I have heard in 19 years on this floor debating this subject. I can scarce summon the language to express my admiration. I acknowledge the persuasion that comes from citing dear friends of 40 years and more, such as Nathan Glazer and James Q. Wilson, with whom I have been associated. But the growing perception of the nature of our problem--I could have wished this debate had never taken place in the Senate. The proposal to disengage the Federal Government from the care of dependent children is not something I can welcome. The address of the Senator from Indiana almost makes it worthwhile. The other evening, Monday evening, at the American Enterprise Institute, Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago presented a superb historical perspective on the cycles of moral and religious awakening that have taken place in the United States since the 1740's, such as during the American Revolution, when we came to judge that the British Government was not sufficient ethically and morally as an institution. Abolition, slavery, temperance--we have had this experience before, and it may be we are beginning it again, because what the Senator says is so very clear that in the end, these are issues of community, issues of relationships, issues of moral understandings and persuasion. I have said that however much we may be taking a retrograde measure with respect to a Government program, for the first time ever, we are beginning to talk about the problems of family structure. President Bush began this in an address at Notre Dame in 1992. President Clinton brought it up in a State of the Union Message when he rather casually cited projections which had been made in our office about where we may be heading. This week's issue of the the Economist discusses it as a worldwide phenomenon but uses the United States as the most advanced and desperate case. I just will make one final caveat if you like, caution if you will. We are finally asking the right questions. I do not think we have answers. None will assert this more with greater conviction than such as Nathan Glazer or James Q. Wilson. Wilson gave the Walter Wriston lecture at the Manhattan Institute in New York City last November entitled ``From Welfare Reform to Character Development.'' His new book is on character. He has this passage. He says: Moreover, it is fathers whose behavior we most want to change, and nobody has explained how cutting off welfare to mothers will make biological fathers act like real fathers. We are told that ending AFDC will reduce illegitimacy, but we don't know that. It is, at best, an informed guess. Some people produced illegitimate children in large numbers long before welfare existed and others in similar circumstances now produce none, even though welfare has become quite generous. We have to accept that. We will not get the right answers until we ask the right questions, but we are not there yet. Without going into detail, we do have some early returns on a program of counseling and education with respect to teenage births, and we find no effect; a very intensive effort now 4 years in place with nothing to show. But that is all right, the effort has begun. Eight years ago, it would not have come. So I just want to express my admiration and my thanks to the eloquent, persuasive Senator from Indiana. Mr. President, I see the Senator from Missouri has risen. I yield the floor. Mr. ASHCROFT addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I heard him say he just celebrated his 30th wedding anniversary. Can I not assume that Mrs. Coats is also celebrating?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I simply would like to be recorded as saying the best of the Senator from Rhode Island is very good, indeed, semper fi, in my view. I will be on that conference. I do not know to what consequence, but I will be there applauding.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. What does the modification do?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence----

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, may I ask that the Senator from Massachusetts be recognized for a unanimous-consent request?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2668

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, as one who dearly loves Federal regulations imposed on States in minute, indecipherable detail, I accept this amendment with great gusto.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was rejected.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I ask that 1 minute be yielded to the Senator from New Mexico and the other minute to the Senator from Rhode Island. Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes. I ask the Chair, how much time is remaining?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Could I say that the Senator from New York is a cosponsor, and on both sides there is support.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, in the current issue of the Economist, the cover story is ``The Disappearing Family,'' and it speaks of the problem of out-of-wedlock births. It says of this Senator that I have taken this problem seriously for 30 years. It quotes an earlier statement that ``a community without fathers asks for and gets chaos.'' I am not new to this subject, and I am very much opposed to a family cap of any kind. This is not the way to deal with this baffling and profoundly serious subject. When my friend from Texas cites the projections of where we will be at the end of the century, those, sir, are my projections. It has been a field I have worked in as he has worked in his field. But the dictum of the Catholic Charities is that the first principle in welfare reform must be ``do no harm.'' These children have not asked to be conceived, and they have not asked to come into the world. We have an elemental responsibility to them. And so I hope, regarding the most fundamentally moral issue we will face on this floor, that we will not have the State deny benefits to children because of the mistakes, or what else you will say, of their parents. Mr. President, I yield back my time.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Two minutes.