Robert Packwood

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to praise the magnificent work of the people on the Senate Finance Committee, majority office, and in my personnel office who were at the core of my welfare reform team and who helped develop and reach a consensus on much of the historic welfare reform legislation that has passed the Senate today. These individuals have been working tirelessly and at length this entire year with me and with other Senators, crafting policy that ends the broken welfare system as we currently know it. The reforms will help our Nation's poor develop self-respect, train them for jobs, lessen the burdens on the hard working taxpayers of this country, give our Governors the greater flexibility they have been asking for, and leave the safety nets of aid and nutrition in place for families, for the elderly and for the disabled. Well deserved praise and my thanks to Lindy Paull, Rick Grafmeyer, Kathy Tobin, Joe Zummo, and Rob Epplin of the Finance Committee, and Marcia Ohlemiller and Ginny Worrest on my personal staff.

Mr. PACKWOOD

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

Mr. PACKWOOD. I object.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the majority leader be able to offer a modification to his amendment after the votes.

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. That has been agreed upon.

Mr. PACKWOOD. I do.

Mr. PACKWOOD. I apologize. I can wait. I am going to be on the floor. The Senator may go right ahead.

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. I thank the Chair and the majority leader. I think many of you are aware of why I am here today. I am aware of the dishonor that has befallen me in the last 3 years, and I do not want to visit further that dishonor on the Senate. I respect this institution and my colleagues too much for that. For 27 years, I have worked alongside Bob Dole, Ted Stevens, and a few others from that era, and most of all with Mark Hatfield, who is not just a colleague but a friend of almost 50 years and who I met when I was a teenage Young Republican. He was a bright, young, yet unelected legislator, who turned out to be my teacher, mentor, and friend. There have been many successes in these 27 years, some failures, some frustrations. Let me remember a few, if I could have your indulgence. Hell's Canyon, that great gash in the Earth that is the boundary between Idaho and Oregon with the Snake River running through it, the deepest gorge in the United States. In the late 1960's, early 1970's, for about 6 years, we had a battle on trying to stop a dam from being built in the gorge and at the same time to create a national recreation area. There is humor I see in this, and I smile at some of the newspaper stories I have seen recently about business lobbyists writing legislation. I want you to picture this trip. We are on a raft trip in the river. I had been invited by environmentalists, most of whom I did not know. I had not seen the gorge before. They wanted me to see it and become involved in the saving of it. One night around the campfire, I believe it was Brock Evans who, I think, is now with the Audubon Society, then with the Sierra Club--we had a highway map of Oregon and Washington, and he takes out a marking pen, and he says, ``I think this is where the boundary is.'' He draws it. Somebody said, ``What about those minerals in Idaho.'' So he crosses it out and draws that up here. That became the boundaries. The humor was--realizing this is drawn with a marking pen--that when you take it to the legislative counsel's office, if he says here--do you know how many miles that is? If he would say, ``Where are these boundaries?'' I would have to smile and say, ``You will have to call Brock.'' There was truck deregulation, an arcane subject that is probably saving consumers more money than anything in deregulation that we have done. Abortion, early on, was a lonely fight. I remember in 1970, 1971, when I introduced the first national abortion legislation, I could get no cosponsor in the Senate. There was only one nibble in the House from Pete McCloskey, who did not quite come on as a sponsor. There was a nibble 2 years before Roe versus Wade. Those were lonely days. That is not a fight that is even yet secure. Israel, and my trips there, the golden domes, the fight that so many of us had made year after year to keep that bastion of our heritage safe and free, and to this date not guaranteed. Tax reform in 1986. We were up against the verge of failure. The House had passed a middling bill. I was chairman of the Finance Committee. Every day we were voting away $15 or $20 billion in more loopholes. I finally just adjourned the committee and said, ``We are done.'' I remember Bill Armstrong saying, ``We are done for the day?'' And I said, ``No, we are done for the session, we will have no more sessions.'' Bill Diefenderfer, my counsel, and I went to the Irish Times for our two famous pitchers of beer. Those were the days I drank. I quit drinking years ago. I know why they call it courage--by the time we finished a second pitcher we drafted out on the napkin an outline and really said, OK, they want tax reform, we will give them tax reform. Here is an example where this body can move when it wants to move. From the time that committee first saw the bill until they passed it in 12 days, Pat Moynihan was a critical player. The six of us met every morning at 8:30 before the meeting. It passed the Senate within a month. So when people say this body cannot move, this body can move. Maybe some of the best advice I had came from Bill Roth, successor to John Williams, years ago, when he used the expression--we were having a debate in those days about the filibuster and cloture and how many votes. In those days I was in favor of lowering the number. I am not sure, even though we are in the majority I would favor that now, from two-thirds to 60 votes. John Williams said we make more mistakes in haste than we lose opportunities in delay. If something should pass, it will pass. It may take 4 or 5 years. That is not a long time in the history of the Republic. Too often in haste we pass things and have to repent. So for whatever advice I have I hope we would not make things too easy in this body and slip through--I say that as a member of the majority. Tuition tax credits, a failure. Pat Moynihan and I introduced the first bill in 1977, and have been introducing it ever since. Its day may come. It may be here. One of the great moments of humor--you have to picture this situation--was in the Carter administration. They were terribly opposed to this tuition tax credit bill. Secretary Califano testified against it twice in the Ways and Means Committee. Came to a Finance Committee hearing and Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Dick Warden came to testify. He had previously been with the United Auto Workers and was hired on as a lobbyist, basically for Health and Human Services--HEW as it was called then. Thirty seconds into his testimony, Senator Moynihan leans forward and said, ``Mr. Warden, why are you here? Why are you here?'' [[Page S 12797]] Mr. Warden goes, ``Why, I am the Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and I am here representing the Secretary, the administration. Pat goes, ``No, no, Mr. Warden, I did not do the emphasis right. Why are 'you' here? Secretary Califano testified twice in opposition to this bill in the House. In this committee, where there is a more favorable climate, where is the Secretary today?'' Mr. Warden goes, ``Why, I think he is in Cleveland speaking.'' Pat goes, ``Well, where is the Under Secretary? Why is he not here today representing the administration? Mr. Warden, why?'' ``I am not sure.'' And Pat's voice rising, saying, ``Where is the Assistant Secretary for Education? Mr. Warden, I was in the Kennedy administration when that position was created and I can say that man has utterly nothing to do at all. He could be here testifying today. Mr. Warden, I will tell you where they are. They are up on the eighth floor of their building, cowering under their desks, afraid to come and testify on the most important piece of education legislation introduced in this century, and Mr. Warden that is why you are here. Now, please go on.'' Poor old Mr. Warden barely went on. I had more humor in education from Pat than probably anybody here. Friendships beyond count. The camaraderie is unbelievable. I look at John Chafee sitting back here, my squash partner. His secretary, about every 3 months, kicks out our squash matches. Over 15 years, 202 to 199. His secretary not only kicks out the matches, but the games and the scores within the match. John every now and then presents it to me, back we go, back and forth, back and forth, and evenly matched as you can be. Some here--Senator Byrd would, Senator Exon would--some in my age group will remember General MacArthur's final speech at West Point: Duty, honor, country. It is my duty to resign. It is the honorable thing to do for this country, for this Senate. So I now announce that I will resign from the Senate, and I leave this institution not with malice but with love, good luck, Godspeed. Mr. HATFIELD addressed the Chair.

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. I congratulate the Senator from Indiana. He and I are on exactly the same wavelength on this. When we were debating the welfare bill initially a few weeks ago before the recess, I cited from a little pamphlet called ``To Empower People--The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy.'' It is 20 years old and it is by Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, two quasi-philosophers. One has some background in religion. I will quote just the first page: Two seemingly contradictory tendencies are evident in current thinking about public policy in America. Bear in mind, this is 20 years ago. First, there is a continuing desire for services provided by the modern welfare state . . . The second tendency is one of strong animus against Government bureaucracy and bigness as such. And then here I might even disagree with this sentence. We suggest that the modern welfare state is here to stay, indeed that it ought to expand the benefits it provides--but that alternative mechanisms are possible to provide welfare state services. And then they just leapfrog even State and local governments and they identify for us neighborhood, family, church, and voluntary associations. And that is why we have put in our bill to the extent we can make it constitutional that there is no prohibition about giving money to the Goodwill or Catholic Charities or a Jewish home for the aged if they are administering social services that we deem relevant. And just because there happens to be a menorah in the hallway or a cross on the wall should not make them ineligible to deliver the kinds of services that they deliver better than any government we have ever seen. I am sure the Senator, as I have, has been to shelter workshops and has seen the Salvation Army or Goodwill and what they do with a minuscule amount of money and lots of volunteers and community spirit that cannot be bought. If you try to buy it, you lose the spirit. And so I am delighted with what the Senator had to say today. And we are on exactly the same wavelength. I hope we are successful.

Mr. PACKWOOD. It is interesting. Maybe the only constant in history is change. In the early common law, 13th, 14th, 15th century, juries were picked on the basis that they knew the defendant, not that they did not know the defendant or did not know the facts. These were neighborhood institutions. And who better to judge somebody than a group that knew somebody. We moved totally away from that. Now we sequester the Simpson jury for months and months and months so they do not know anybody, hopefully. But that was an attempt by the law 500 years ago to say, ``We think neighbors are better judges of people than anybody else.'' We moved away from it, maybe wisely, maybe not. But the concept is not new that neighborhood knows better than anybody else. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bills be printed in the Record.

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Government Information for the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 6, 1995, at 10 a.m. in SH216 to hold a hearing on the Ruby Ridge incident.

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I never cease to learn from my good friend from New York. In the quarter of a century I have been in this Senate, [[Page S 12683]] there have been a number of memorable Senators, none that I have learned more from than Pat Moynihan. I count him as a friend, a teacher, a mentor. It is interesting how we sometimes take the same facts, however, and reach different conclusions. I went to law school at New York University in the center of Manhattan in the mid-1950's. And much as I love New York and Manhattan and find it an exciting borough, when I finished law school I had no desire to stay there. I went back to Oregon and started to practice law and kept my home and roots there ever since. But I remember public housing in the mid-1950's in New York. The Federal Government dictated what public housing would be, and we knew best. Our philosophy was that, if people had a decent roof over their heads, all else would flow and follow. Education would follow, crime would disappear; so long as you had a decent shower and a bed. So we built, not 5- and 10-story public housing projects, 20- and 25-story public housing projects. And we clustered them together; not one building, but three or four, with concrete parks, barely any grass for the kids to play, and thousands and thousands of roughly similarly economically situated poor people clustered together. What we ended up with were 20- and 25-story slums, crime-ridden, drug-infested slums. It did not work. I do not mean this as critical of the thinkers of the mid-1950's. That was the best thought in the fifties. Now the Federal Government thinks the best thought is what we call scatter buildings. We are not going to put up 25-story buildings; we are going to put 60 units in Queens and 30 units in Westchester County and some more in Staten Island. We are going to scatter them about. It may be a better decision. It may not be. I am not sure. Yet it is another example of where the Federal Government now says the philosophy of 40 years ago was wrong and this philosophy is right. I offer this only to say there is no guarantee that any public policy you adopt will work out exactly as you hope it will work out. It does not mean that you are malevolent in your thoughts or deliberately ordaining that it would not work out. It is just things you thought would happen do not. How often I heard my friend from New York talk about the law of unintended consequences. So, with that background, I want to go back into the history of welfare in the United States, starting in 1935; what we hoped would happen, what has happened. I think we can say this. If our hope of welfare was to get people off of welfare, if welfare was to be a trampoline so that you could spring back useful to society, it has not worked. It has become not a trampoline, but a hammock. And that I think we can say with assuredness. I am not sure we had any witness that appeared before the Finance Committee as we were having hearings on welfare reform that defended the present system as working. Some wanted to simply jettison the entire thing. Some wanted to tinker with it but keep it a Federal system. Others wanted to devolve more power and authority to the States. But nobody defended it as it was. So how did we get to where we are? Go back to 1935. My good friend from New York talked about the 1935 Social Security Act. It was passed in 1935. And Social Security, the act, had two parts to it. One was the pension that we are well familiar with. The other was a welfare component for widows and orphans. How often has the Senator from New York referred to it colloquially, but correctly, as a pension for the miner's young widow and the miner's young child. Both provisions, in essence, covered the same people but for different purposes. In the mid-1930's if you are the breadwinner--it is basically men that are working--if you lived to 65, you took care of your wife, and probably by that time your minor children had grown up. If you died at age 45 however, and you were the breadwinner, there was no survivors' benefits in the original Social Security Act. Suddenly the widow and the child are thrown out onto the street. So the welfare provision of the 1935 Act was designed to take care of the widow and the orphan child. And it was presumed, I think, that if the widow got married again, she would no longer need any public support, and if she did not get married, she at least got this income while the child was a minor and she was a widow. And almost all welfare at this time--1935 onward for a fair number of years--was for widows and orphans. Then in 1939, we amended the Social Security Act to include survivors. The breadwinner dies at 45. It was still usually a man in those days. He has a 40-year-old widow and three children, ages 16, 12, and 9. There were survivors' benefits under Social Security. If you were a widow with children, you got 75 percent of what the person who died would have gotten had that person reached Social Security age, and you got 75 percent for each child, though it was capped. You did not get 75 percent for every child if you had 15 children. After World War II, we rather rapidly expanded the coverage of Social Security. My hunch is the biggest single group may have come in in 1953 or 1954 under President Eisenhower, when we brought in an immense number of people: Agriculture----

Mr. PACKWOOD. Self employed. We brought in an awful lot of people.

Mr. PACKWOOD. State and local. We brought them in and, by 1960, most people were covered by Social Security and that included survivors. So if the breadwinner died, the widow and the orphan were taken care of. Therefore, welfare--I am not talking about Social Security survivors insurance, I am talking about welfare as we knew it in the 1930's; when the breadwinner dies there is no Social Security survivors' benefits-- welfare as we knew it began to disappear because Social Security benefits, survivors' benefits, were usually more generous than welfare would be, and survivors' benefits supplanted what welfare had initially been for widows and orphans. From about 1950 onward, maybe a little earlier again--the Senator from New York would know more specifically than I would--aid to dependent children, as we now call it aid to families with dependent children, AFDC, started tilting toward support for unwed mothers and children who had never had a breadwinner in the house. It was no longer the concept of the widow and the orphan. There never was a breadwinner. And, instead of emergency financial support for a widow who was suddenly deprived of her breadwinner, AFDC, aid to families with dependent children, gradually and then overwhelmingly became a lifetime support system for many people. And in many cases it became a generation after generation support system. Today, only 1 to 2 percent of welfare is because of the death of a breadwinner. That is how much it has changed from what it was originally intended. Now, from 1935 onward, but especially from 1960 onward, as we have seen this movement toward welfare being for unwed mothers, people who never had breadwinners, the Federal Government has tinkered and tried and toyed to make this system work. If the woman dropped out of high school in the middle of her junior year and had a baby and did not go back, to try to educate her, to try to help her get a job--and we have attached more baubles and geegaws to the Federal welfare system in efforts to make it work than the mind can comprehend. But it has not worked. If it was meant to stem the rise of illegitimacy, it has not worked. If it was meant to get people back to work, it has not worked. If it was meant to somehow break the generational cycles, it has not worked. Has it failed because we did not spend enough money? Let us go back and take a look over the years of what we have spent. I am going to use the year 1947 as a base for this reason. What we spent in the 1930's was minuscule. During World War II, we did not spend anything for all practical purposes. But during the war, from 1944 to 1945, believe it or not--we talk about the defense budget now--the defense budget was 40 percent of our gross domestic product and 90 percent of our total budget. We did not do anything else. We were a war machine. We were borrowing to do it. And we were willing to spend that much on defense because we [[Page S 12684]] thought it was necessary for the preservation of Western civilization. I am inclined to think that was a correct decision. So when I hear people say we cannot afford to spend for our defense, just as an aside, a great nation can afford to spend. We are now spending 4 or 5 percent over gross national product on defense. We can argue, can we afford 4 or 5 percent? Yes, we can. But it did mean in those years we were not spending money for anything else of any consequence except on the war. And the first real budget year, fiscal year, after the war was 1947; 1946 was midway through when the war was still going on. I am going to use the term ``constant dollars'' rather than ``current dollars'' because current dollars can be illusory. I will define the difference. A current dollar is $1 today. I spend $100 on a Federal program. Let us say you have 100 percent inflation. Next year we spend $200 on the Federal program. You have not spent any more money. You have 100 percent inflation. The person that gets it has not gotten anything more to spend. That is why we have COLA's on Social Security. That is called current dollars. To put it in comparison, in current 1947 dollars we spent $2 billion on what the Social Security Administration basically called welfare. This is 10 or 12 programs. In 1947 we were spending $2 billion. In 1991 we were spending $180 billion. Even if you put it in terms of constant dollars--because current dollars does not take into account inflation-- the figures are still dramatic. If you assume that the value of the dollar today was the same as the value in 1947, and there has been no inflation in that period of roughly 45 years, then in 1947, in today's dollars, we were spending $10 billion on all of these programs. Today, we spend $180 billion. On AFDC alone, in 1947 we were spending in constant dollars $697 million, today we are spending $18 billion, about a 2500-percent increase. You want to take a last figure. These programs in the Social Security Administration count as programs for the poor. In 1947, they were 0.7 of 1 percent of our gross domestic product. Today, they are slightly in excess of 3 percent. So they have grown dramatically. Welfare has not failed because we did not spend money. We have spent more money by any measure. Has it failed because of inadequate regulations? The 1935 bill when it passed was 2\1/2\ pages long. This is the section relating to welfare, 2\1/2\ pages. There were no regulations initially. The bill really had six requirements of the States as follows: First, the program had to be in effect in all political subdivisions throughout the State. That is an easy enough requirement. Second, there had to be some financial participation by the State. That is easy enough to figure. Third, it had to be administered by a single State agency. That is easy enough to figure. Fourth, there had to be an opportunity for a fair hearing for somebody if they had been denied benefits. That is not too difficult to figure. Fifth, although this one becomes a little more ephemeral, the State had to provide such methods of administration as would be necessary for an efficient operation of the plan. As I say, I am not quite sure what that means exactly, but I will show you what it means in just a moment. Then lastly, the State had to file reports that would assure the correctness and verification of basically what they were intending. That was relatively simple. From that has grown what we have in welfare today. The Senator from New York referred to this stack on this desk which I shall attempt to lift. These, Mr. President, are the regulations that an Oregon caseworker must be familiar with in order to determine just two things: No. 1, the eligibility of a recipient for welfare; No. 2, how much shall that recipient get. That is what you have to go through in order to determine just whether you are eligible. How much do you get? Follow me to this chart back here. Here is the eligibility process. You come into the welfare office. ``Hi, I am Johnny Jones. I would like to apply for welfare.'' Initial application. All right. The caseworkers says, ``Give me your proof of identity, age, citizenship. I want your driver's license, Social Security card for each person, birth certificate for each person, alien registration, or arrival and departure record, or any other identification from any other agencies or organizations.'' This assumes a person coming in for welfare actually has these things or knows how to put their hands on it. Assuming you have proved your identity, we now go to proof of relationship and child in the home. Signed and dated statement from friend or relative naming each child and residence, birth certificate or other documents stating parent's name. Assume you have that. Then we go over to proof of residence and shelter costs. ``Give us your electric bill, paid or unpaid; give us your gas or fuel bills, paid or unpaid; rental or lease agreement; rent receipt; landlord statement; landlord deed to property; proof of housing subsidies.'' No wonder this stack is getting thicker and thicker as you go through giving us all of this information. Now we come down to proof of family after you have gone through all of this. Death certificate for deceased parent; divorce papers or separation papers showing date, if separated; a statement from a friend, neighbor, or relative proving marriage certificates; if in prison, date of imprisonment, length of service; if pregnant, a medical statement with expected delivery date; if disabled, name of doctor, name of hospital and a doctor's statement. This is just starting to prove eligibility. Does anyone here have any income? No. You have no income. I want you to think about proving a negative. ``No, I do not have any income.'' ``Let me see your bank account and savings account.'' ``I do not have a bank or savings book. I do not have any bank account.'' Well, you have to prove you do not have a bank account. Current checking account statements and real estate documents. I want you to picture Johnny Jones coming in asking for welfare. ``Where are your real estate statements?'' ``I don't have any.'' ``What do you mean, you do not have any? Can you prove it?'' ``No. I don't have any.'' ``Prove you don't have any.'' ``I do not have any.'' Payment books or receipts for all mortgages and land sales. Do you know how much land Johnny sells? He is not really involved in big time in real estate sales. List of all stocks and bonds and current market value; title of all motor vehicles and bill of sale; bank payments or agreement; documents showing life insurance and estate or trust funds. Name me welfare recipients who have trust funds. If they have trust funds, they are not welfare recipients and they will not be in this office at the first stage. Insurance policies? They might have insurance policies. Now, if you have done all that, you make an eligibility decision. However, this is if you have no income. But if you have income, now we come down here. Proof of income. Uncashed worker's compensation or other benefit check; latest Social Security or VA benefit award letter; court order stating amount of support or alimony; notice of unemployment benefits, record of payments received, or uncashed check; records of income from self-employment, farm income or business income, tax records, profit and loss statements, or income producing contracts; wage stubs or employer's statement of gross wages for the last 30 days. You have to prove all that. But interestingly, what counts as income and what does not count as income? Count adoption assistance if not for special needs. That counts as income. Do not count as income adoption assistance for a child's special needs. Now, you are poor Johnny Jones getting these questions, trying to figure it out. You count as income payments under the Agent Orange Act of 1991. You do not count as income benefits [[Page S 12685]] from the Agent Orange Settlement Fund if it is given by Aetna Life. I do not know why it is limited to Aetna Life. Well, Mr. President, I am not going to go on with the rest of this. This is what welfare has become. It is no wonder that caseworkers are frustrated beyond belief. The caseworkers I have met are perfectly decent people who would like to help the poor. Now I will give you a quote from the former executive director of the Oregon Progress Board. ``Almost all of the Oregon Option undertakings''--Oregon Options is the welfare plan that we have gotten authorization to try--``require the use of federal funds and, in many cases, the waiver of federal rules and restrictions on how the money is used.'' As Wyse said, We need the federal government as a partner. But federal programs that provide money tend to be severely prescriptive and riddled with red tape that stifles innovation. In the biggest area of federal aid--welfare--at least 20 percent [20 percent] of our administrative time and money costs have been spent on federal paperwork. My classic example, however, does not deal with welfare per se. It is Harley, Harley, the Vietnamese potbellied, drug-sniffing pig. This pig can smell drugs like dogs do, so the Portland police bureau applied to the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, for Federal funds that they allocate for drug-sniffing dogs. The DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration, said no, it only applies to dogs. It does not apply to pigs. To which the Portland police bureau said: ``This pig can smell better than a dog, and it is cheaper than a dog.'' Now, I have to give Vice President Gore credit. He worked this out by declaring Harley an honorary dog. That solved our problem. There is Harley, the honorary dog, right there. That is the frustration of dealing with the Federal Government. Did the DEA mean to be obtuse and mean? Of course not. Of course not. It is just that big things of necessity have to be pigeonholed. It is not true just of Government. It is true of big institutions. It becomes more and more difficult, the bigger you get, to deal with individuality. You have to fit the pigeonhole whether you are a university with 25,000 students or General Motors. It is one of the reasons why small and often family-held companies are able to do much better and compete against giants that are 100 times their size but immobile. About 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago now, there was a story in one of the nationwide business publications on who sets the price of plywood in the United States. Weyerhaeuser is a big producer. Georgia Pacific is a big producer. But the article concluded that it was set by Ken Ford of what was then called the Roseburg Lumber Co. That is now Roseburg Forest Products. It was a family-owned company and still privately held, as I recall. They have about 3,000 employees in an area of about 15,000 to 20,000. It is the dominant employer. The article said as Mr. Ford's plywood is moving across the country on the railcars, he can call Chicago and say, ``Cut it 50 cents a board foot,'' and it is cut. And Weyerhaeuser and Georgia Pacific immediately follow suit. But they cannot take the lead because it is a corporate board decision of some kind. They do not have anybody in the organization that can say to cut it 50 cents a foot. So Mr. Ford sets the prices for plywood. He is still alive and the company is still going. And he is still a dominant force in his business. You see it in the electronics business today. How many companies are there? Have you ever seen that wonderful list of companies? There are over 20,000 or 25,000 companies that did not exist in 1968, either just did not exist or were just getting founded in the 1960's, electronics or otherwise. You look at just one facet of communications, personal communications, the little hand-held phones you use. In 1982, when AT&T and the Federal Government agreed to a consent decree breaking up AT&T and creating what we now call the regional Bells--seven--it was a very inclusive agreement. The Justice Department and AT&T tried to think of everything they could to include. Do you know the one thing they left out? Personal portable telephones. There was no future in that. There were 18,000 in the country. There are 25 million now. By the end of the century--there might be 125 million in 10 years. We will have as many of those as we have telephones. It is not AT&T, MCI, and Sprint that are dominating that business. Those are long-distance carriers. But the companies that have moved into this business were small, sharp, quick companies that can compete with Bell Atlantic, compete with AT&T. And they move rapidly. They find a niche. They are good at it. They are small. So when we get to this bill, it is an interesting difference in philosophy, on average--I am generalizing here--on average, between Republicans and Democrats to this extent. On average, Democrats in the provision of social services have a mistrust of it being done by private enterprise, whether that be a profitmaking private enterprise or not. I want to emphasize, I am generalizing. They have less mistrust if it is done by Catholic Charities or Goodwill, but they feel more comfortable if the Government is doing it. Republicans are a little more inclined to say let us let the private sector do it or let us give some grants or help with the private sector, but let them take the lead. The second difference is that if it must be done by Government, there is still a general feeling among most Democrats that it should be done or at least directed by the Federal Government. Republicans feel pretty much the converse, that it should be done and directed by State or local government. I am delighted we are debating this bill outside of what we call reconciliation. Reconciliation is going to be this big-budget bill that will come to us in 2 months--6 weeks, I would say. It is going to have everything in it--Medicare, Medicaid, earned-income tax credit, and tax cuts--and it is limited under our rules to 20 hours of debate, 10 hours on a side. Welfare, if put in that bill, would get half an hour's debate. Medicare, I will bet, gets 8 hours of 10 in the debate, and this subject deserves more debate than that because it is an honest difference of opinion. I emphasize ``honest difference of opinion.'' The Republicans want to do what we call break the Federal entitlement. We are saying we will give to the States as much money as they are getting now--but not as much as they would otherwise get if we did not change the law. And in exchange, we will say to the States, we are going to remove most of the strings that have been hampering you for the past if not 50 years, certainly 30 years. We are going to give you certain outlines and guidelines, and you cannot use this money for airport tarmacs. You have to use it for the poor. But you decide, New York, whether your problems are different than South Dakota's. You decide, Oregon, whether your problems are different from Ohio's and attempt to shape your welfare program with the limited amount of money we give you to what you think your needs are. Mr. President, they are different. If you are Florida or Texas or New Mexico or Arizona and have an immense immigrant population and, in any case, a Hispanic-speaking population--New York has it--virtually you have a problem just of language for many young people. That same problem, but to a much lesser degree, exists in Oregon. My guess would be, I do not know, that it exists not at all in South Dakota. I am taking a guess there is not an immense Hispanic-speaking immigrant population in South Dakota. So right away, the problems are different. (Mr. ASHCROFT assumed the chair.)

Mr. PACKWOOD. I will.

Mr. PACKWOOD. There is a slight difference in the problems. When the [[Page S 12686]] Dole bill passes, and I hope it will--I think the amendment of the Democratic majority leader will fail--I hope we go forward with this not in a spirit of, ``Well, the Republicans have won'' and cheer. I want to close with what I said at the start. There is no guarantee that if we pass this bill, as the Republicans are talking about, there is no guarantee we will solve the problem. There is a guarantee that if we continue as we have been going, we will not solve the problem. We have not solved the problem and there is no hope we will solve the problem continuing on the line of Federal regulation and control as we have gone. My guess is that many States will experiment with this and will find their experiments fail. Many others will experiment with it in a different fashion and find they succeed. And then some of the successes will be taken to other States and found it does not work in that State yet does work in other States. The States are going to become labs over the next 5 years and, by and large, most of them are going to hit upon what will work in their State with the limited amount of money that we give them, and they will be much quicker to jettison programs that do not work than we are. The last thing we have put in this bill--and I see the Senator from Missouri is in the chair and it was his suggestion--we have put in this bill, to the extent that it is constitutional, that it is permissible for this money to be given to religious organizations to carry out social welfare purposes. There is nothing wrong with that. Just because Catholic Charities is Catholic should not mean that it is incapable of administering to the poor. Just because the Salvation Army may have a cross on the wall does not mean that it cannot run a good sheltered workshop. It will run a better sheltered workshop than anything the Government might run. As I say, we cannot by law make something constitutional that is unconstitutional. I know the fear and the argument: Not only are they going to minister to the needs of the poor, they are going to try to proselytize them, make them Catholics or make them whatever. Mr. President, I think that risk is worth it. I think the risk is worth it. If a person goes to a Salvation Army sheltered workshop or a meals program run by a charity that happens to have a menorah in the hallway, I am not sure that is going to be so offensive to what we are trying to achieve that it should be prohibited. I will leave it to the courts--and there will be suits--to decide whether or not it is constitutional. I will say this to my good friend from New York, he and I now almost 20 years ago, not quite, introduced bills to allow tuition tax credits. In the interim, Wisconsin has tried it and now I see the courts have declared it partially unconstitutional. But it is working. These inner- city kids are getting a good education. We simply wanted to say to the parents--by and large, it liberates the poor. It does not liberate the rich. They are going to private schools anyway and they are going to parochial schools. It was a modest credit. We say a parent can put their child in a religious school and they can deduct part of their cost off of their income tax. For 18 years he and I have tried to get that. We have been unsuccessful so far. Every now and then, he will send me a clipping when another inner- city Catholic school has closed or perhaps the whole diocese has closed, I do not know, and say, ``They didn't listen to us, they didn't listen to us.'' It was touching when we had hearings on this to have some of the poorest women come and testify. These were single mothers working for the Federal Government, often in relatively modest positions, making in those days, the late seventies, $15,000, $16,000 a year, putting their children in private school, paying for it themselves, religious schools, not even of their religion because they wanted an alternative to public school. This bill is going to try to permit all of that, not because we want to intrude religion on people, but because we do not want to preclude religion having the opportunity to serve people. Mr. President, over the next 4 or 5 days, we will debate the philosophy of this bill. I suppose we will debate lots of itsy-bitsy details. But the philosophy is infinitely more important than itsy- bitsy details. This bill, if adopted, is a watershed, is a turning point from the concept that the Federal Government is be all and know all. I hope we are daring enough to take the step. I do not promise it will work, but I do promise that with what we are trying now, we will continue to fail. I thank the Chair and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, Lawrence Summers has been nominated by President Clinton to be the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. On July 21, 1995, the Senate Finance Committee approved Larry Summers nomination on a voice vote. I am pleased that the Senate is able to consider Mr. Summers nomination today. Frank Newman, who is the current Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, is leaving at the end of this month. The Deputy Secretary's slot is a very important position and needs to be filled quickly. Larry Summers is a qualified individual who has held numerous important government and academic positions. Mr. Summers is currently the Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs. Before coming to the Treasury Department he served as Vice President of the World Bank for 2 years--1991-93. Before that, Summers taught economics at Harvard University for over 10 years and also worked for almost a year for the Council of Economic Advisors during the Reagan Presidency. I am aware that some Members of the Senate have concern over Mr. Summers role during the Mexican currency crisis. While I understand their concern, I also believe that the President of the United States should be able to choose the key members of his administration if the nominee is qualified for the position. I believe that Larry Summers is qualified for the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury position. I support his nomination and urge the Senate to approve his nomination.

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, today, with Senator Moynihan, I am submitting a resolution commending the 60th anniversary of the signing of the 1935 Social Security Act. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935. The act, in addition to provisions for general welfare programs, created a social insurance program to pay retired workers, age 65 or older, an income after retirement from the work force. In signing the Social Security Act, President Roosevelt said: We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age . . . In saluting this 60th anniversary, Senator Moynihan and I emphasize the economic security that this measure of protection has brought to millions of Americans. Our attention will continue to be focused on maintaining the solvency of the Social Security trust funds so that these earned benefits will continue to be provided to working Americans in the future.

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, as I understand it, we are not under controlled time. I believe the Senator from Delaware is prepared to speak.

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

Mr. PACKWOOD

Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous- consent request that has been agreed to?

Mr. PACKWOOD. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate continue with debate on H.R. 4, the welfare reform bill, until the hour of 4 o'clock today without any amendments.