Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, it was my understanding that there was to be 20 minutes equally divided.

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank my friend from Texas. Mr. President, last evening, we debated this matter in greater length. I took the liberty to go over the historical provision of the entitlement by States to a matching share of their expenditures on children. From the first, it has been a formula designed to move more Federal funds to the South and West, out of the North and East. The ratio is determined by the square of the difference between the State's per capita income and national per capita income. States have received as much as an 83 percent Federal match. New York and California get the lowest Federal match rate: 50 percent. We have since recalculated our poverty data to account for cost of living. Mr. President, may I make this point? Adjusted for the CPI, New York State has the sixth highest incidence of poverty in the country. Florida has the 20th highest. Arkansas has the 19th highest. New York is a poorer State than Arkansas. A new idea, I grant; new data, I assert. But truth as well. This amendment would cost California $5.4 billion and New York $4.6 billion. Not because we have had an advantage in the Federal formula. To the contrary. It is because we have had a civic policy that has sought caring for children to be a higher priority than perhaps some others have done, or we felt we had the capacity, even in the face of the data that suggests we have not. This is an elemental injustice. I am openly conflicted. If this amendment passes, the bill dies. But in the first instance, I will remain loyal to the principle of the last 60 years. My time has expired. I thank the Senator from Texas.

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Chair can name names if that becomes necessary.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I believe the time has been agreed to, 4 minutes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, 42 votes. A good vote. I move to reconsider.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I must once again respectfully suggest the Senate is not in order. We cannot hear the Senator.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I respectfully suggest the Senate is not in order.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. While I put on a button from Riverside, CA. It says, ``Life Works If You Work.'' That is the spirit of these programs, and they are working. But we cannot talk about them, evidently. I thank the Senator. I thank the Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for 10 seconds-- --

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Thanking the Chair and thanking my friend from Louisiana, I yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Chair. I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for his very open and candid remarks. I would like to approach this subject from a slightly different angle, which is to make the case that Federal initiatives have begun to show real results in moving persons from welfare to work. It took a little while for the 1988 legislation to take hold, but it did. What we put at risk at this point is giving up all that social learning, about 20 years really, that built up to the 1988 legislation and has followed on since. The Senator from Louisiana mentioned it when in the Chamber he gave a clip from a Louisiana paper, in Baton Rouge, ``Project Independence Trims Welfare Rolls Across State.'' Just a few days ago, last week, we heard Senator Harkin of Iowa describe the legislation that had been adopted for new pilot projects on welfare around Iowa, passed by Governor Branstad, now having 2 years of experience. ``The number of people who work doubled, went up by almost 100 percent and the expenditures per case are also down by about 10 percent.'' And I point out once again that is the Family Support Act. Now, in this morning's Washington Post, we have a very able essay by Judith Gueron, who is the head of the Manpower Development Research Corp., ``A Way Out of the Welfare Bind.'' As I have said several times, research at MDRC was the basis of our 1988 legislation. Data we had. She makes a simple point that ``Public opinion polls have identified three clear objectives for welfare reform: Putting recipients to work, protecting children from severe poverty, and controlling costs.'' And she makes the point that this triad involves conflicting goals at first glance. She then goes on to say that we seem to be learning how to resolve those conflicts. I will read one statement, if I may. A recent study looked at three such programs in Atlanta, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Riverside, Calif. It found that the programs reduced the number of people on welfare by 16 percent, decreased welfare spending by 22 percent, and increased participants' earnings by 26 percent. Other data on the Riverside program showed that, over time, it saved almost $3 for every $1 it cost to run the program. This means that ultimately it would have cost the Government more--far more-- had it not run the program. Now, Mr. President, it is not at this point any longer politically correct to say that those programs began under the Family Support Act. They are programs under the job opportunities, basic services. I regret that you cannot say this. The Department of Health and Human Services would deny it. Silence is the response to the first success we have ever had with this incredibly defying, mystifying, sudden social problem. If we give up the maintenance of effort, we will give up the resources that made these programs possible. Senator Grassley has been talking about the wonders in Iowa, Senator Harkin about the wonders in Iowa, Senator Breaux about fine programs such as Project Independence in Louisiana. Atlanta, Grand Rapids, Riverside--real results. They are results from a secret program called the Family Support Act, the job opportunities, basic services. I hope we do not do it, Mr. President. I hope we support the Senator from Louisiana. This is not a moment of which anybody can be particularly proud. Let me be clear. If we put through time limits, we strip the Federal Government of responsibility, you will cut caseloads 10, 15 percent. There is always on the margin people who really do not--if the alternative was sufficiently unpleasant, they would leave. But you will not change the basic phenomenon of nonmarital births, out-of-wedlock births such that in the city of New Orleans, 47 percent of the children are on welfare at one point or another in the year. That is small compared to the city of Washington, but it is not small compared to the concern of the Senator from Louisiana. He cares about those children. They are his children. They are our children, too. And if we abandon the Federal maintenance, the Federal level of effort, we abandon those children. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article in the Washington Post about the secret Government program that has done such wonders in Riverside and Grand Rapids and Atlanta be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. New York is 50.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I could not have stated this case more emphatically, with more clarity and more charity than the Senator from New Mexico. We are talking about children who do not have any control over when they come into the world or in what circumstances. I would want to make one point. It need not be made in the Senate Chamber, but just for the record. There is a notion that somehow welfare families are large. They are not. They are smaller than the average, husband-and-wife family. The average number of children is 1.9. They begin too early. They begin without the arrangements that need to accompany, ought to accompany, the beginning of a family, a stable husband-wife relationship. Children born to these single women in poverty do poorly the rest of their lives, by and large. We know so little about why all this has happened. There are efforts abroad to change this culture of dependency, to get the mothers on welfare off the rolls and into work. We have heard one Senator after another describing the programs in place in their States--Iowa, California, Georgia, Michigan--under the Family Support Act, in which States do what they think best and experiment. But do not put the lives of children at risk in this way. Or at least do not do it because the Federal Government says you have to. That would be unpardonable. I fear that we are making a grave mistake by prohibiting benefits to children born into welfare families, but if it is to be done, far better that the Federal Government not impose the requirement upon States which do not desire it. Therefore I very much hope that this amendment is approved tomorrow. I have every confidence that it will be. Ask any of us--any of us--ask what if one of our children was in this situation? That could happen. We know what we would say. These other children are our children, too. I hope that the Senator's amendment will be adopted when it is debated tomorrow morning. And, again, I note that there will be 10 minutes equally divided at that time. I thank the Chair. I see the Senator from North Carolina is on the floor. He has an amendment, as I believe. Mr. FAIRCLOTH addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. None.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, might I add that, if they think they wish not to do so, they would let us know. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, to respond to my friend from Illinois, I can only offer a judgment of a better part of a lifetime dealing with these matters, that it would make it hugely worse. We would be off that chart. We would be an anomaly among the developed nations of the world. We would be an object of disdain and disbelief. I can say no more. I yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I rise with the most emphatic support of the amendment of the distinguished, learned Senator from Illinois, who brings to us the central subject of this legislation, which is children and what will happen to them under the provisions we are discussing. I have two charts which I would like to suggest involves the central issue of the number of families that would be affected by a 5-year time limit. This is the work of the Urban Institute, established almost 30 years ago when it was thought we would address these issues at a time when they were--Franklin Roosevelt might have said it--``a cloud no bigger than a man's hand,'' that would come into the situation we are today of the number of families who would lose their benefits, who would see a 5-year time limit reach them. In the year 2001, a total of 1.4 million families; make it almost 2 million, 2.5 million children. In 2002, 1.65; make that 3 million children. This is the Urban Institute, Mr. President. This is not a political document. It is not one that is even touched by the necessary differences and tensions between the executive branch and the legislative branch. This is the Urban Institute, under William Gorham, with whom I worked on the task force that produced the Economic Opportunity Act of 1965. Bill Gorham and I worked together. He never stopped working at this. He has created an institute of impeccable standards. No one will ever say that we have got the most perfect measuring systems, but we have peer review, we have measures of degrees of confidence in data. And the numbers are overwhelming. In the year 2003, 1.8 million families; 2004, 1.9 million; 2005, 1.96 million--call it 2 million families, and call that 5 million children. The 2 million is an estimate; the 1.96 is exact. I am making a round number. Five million children with no provision for their support, with their support in some sense illegal--certainly not contemplated, certainly not desired by this legislation. Are we to believe that my friend from Utah, who is as compassionate and understanding a man, a member of our congregation 19 years ago on this subject--this is what has happened. And this is why it would happen and where it would happen. The numbers are startling. The proportion of children receiving AFDC--I would like to bring this around so my friend can see it. My friend from Illinois has seen it in the past. This is what we are dealing with. Thirty years ago when the OEO legislation was adopted, when the Urban Institute was established, we were talking about numbers so small that you could say let them be done by church, let them be done by localities, let them be done by municipalities. In Baltimore, MD, in the course of a year, 56 percent of all children receive AFDC. At any given moment, 43 percent are receiving it. In Detroit, MI, in the course of a year, 67 percent, numbers that we have not contemplated. This is a time of continued economic prosperity, in the aftermath of a half-century in which we basically have managed the business cycle. We have had pockets of unemployment, but unemployment ranged at very comfortable levels. The level of employment is high. In Los Angeles, 38 percent, Los Angeles, the setting of all those grand houses, remarkable neighborhoods, 38 percent. Philadelphia, I do wish my friend from Pennsylvania were here so I could say to him, in Philadelphia, 57 percent of the children are on AFDC at some point during the course of a year. In my own city of New York, 39 percent; New Orleans, 47 percent; Milwaukee, 53 percent; Memphis, 45 percent; Cleveland, 66 percent. These numbers overwhelm a social system. It cannot handle it. Should we have ever gotten to this point? I do not say we should have. Should we have done more? Yes, we should have. Have we done some things? Yes, we have. We have certainly committed the Federal Government to this issue. I was reading this morning the statement in the Washington Post by Judith Gueron, president of Manpower Development Research Corp., as the Senator from Illinois well knows. She was saying, ``Look, we are learning to do these things.'' She talked about Riverside, talked about Atlanta, talked about Grand Rapids, Family Support Act, jobs programs, working, getting hold, finally getting it. The Senator will remember the director from Riverside, CA, where President Bush visited 3 years ago. There was a button: ``Life works if you work,'' getting the sense that welfare offices should be employment offices. If only people had been a little more gracious to Frances Perkins, and if only Frances Perkins had been a little less willing to accommodate whatever President Roosevelt seemed to need at the time, the AFDC Program would be in the Department of Labor. The Social Security Act, with its retirement benefits, unemployment insurance, dependent children was to be in the Department of Labor, but there was the suspicion of labor, and such, and the underestimate of Mrs. Perkins' enormous ability. She said, ``All right, we will have an independent agency.'' Had it not been, right now, when you walk into a welfare office, you would be in a U.S. Employment Service office, but it did not happen. But it is happening again. The Daschle bill contemplated the first thing you do when you arrive at the welfare office is, how are we going to get you a job? But right now, not to see the enormity of this problem, the dimension of this problem, to think we can turn it back, cut it back and turn it back without huge costs to children is baffling to me. I thank God the Senator from Illinois is here. I hope she will be heard, and if she is not, pray God for the children. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, may I inquire of my friend from Illinois, has one of the amendments been accepted?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, we must have order. This is a matter of consequence.

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.