Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, there is no objection to this amendment on this side. We are willing to accept the amendment.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent it be in order to ask unanimous consent to order the yeas and nays on amendment 4911.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator from Florida agree to a time agreement at this point?

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I think this is an area where there is just a disagreement in philosophy. I respect the Senator from Florida, and there probably is not a Member in this Chamber who knows more about the difficulty in dealing with a large number of legal immigrants in this country than the former Governor of Florida. But I think there is just a philosophical difference here, or a difference of what we believe is fair and equitable in this country. What we are talking about is a particular class of legal immigrants. We are not talking about refugees, people who come to this country seeking refuge from persecution in their homeland. All refugees are excluded from the provisions of this bill. In other words, they are fully entitled to the array of social welfare benefits provided by the Federal Government. Asylees, for example, the two Cuban baseball players--they are probably not going to need any social welfare benefits given their talent level, but if they were not so talented and were here in this country claiming political asylum, they would continue to be eligible for a variety of welfare benefits. We are, in a sense, to my understanding, unique in that respect around the world. There are, to my knowledge, no other countries that do provide welfare benefits to legal immigrants and their noncitizens in their country. So, in a sense, we are keeping very much with the tradition of our country, with the Statue of Liberty when we suggest that those who are under persecution at home, that those who are in need of this country as a beacon of freedom are, in fact, provided for by this country. So I think that is something we should all agree on, be proud of and, obviously, continue, and we do that in this bill. What we do not continue in this bill, and I think wisely do not continue, is to continue to provide benefits to what are called sponsored immigrants. Sponsored immigrants are immigrants who come to this country, and almost all come to this country through a family unification provision, which is to unify a family, whether it is a spouse or a child or a mother or a father or a sister or a brother. They come to this country to unify a family, and when they do so, the citizen of this country, who is the sponsor, signs a document. The document says that I will take financial responsibility for this person who I want to bring to this country for a period of 5 years, and that all of my assets are deemed available and in the possession, so to speak, constructive possession of the person coming into this country for purposes of evaluating whether that person is eligible for welfare or other Government benefits. That is current law. But the problem with this whole agreement is it is not legally enforceable, and they are not enforced. In fact, one hand does not know what the other hand is doing. The welfare department has no idea what the immigration status is, and, in fact, these benefits are handed out without really much knowledge of the immigration status of the individual involved. What we are seeing--and the Senator from New York and the Senator from New Mexico discussed this earlier today--is a trend. I say it is even more than a trend, it is an avalanche, and the avalanche is elderly family reunification, elderly being the bringing over of mom or dad to this country. Mom or dad being 60 or 70 or 80 years of age, coming to this country, you know, the doting son signs the sponsor agreement. And lo and behold, mom, who is disabled, ends up on SSI. Or if you are elderly, because you qualify when you are over 65, you end up on SSI. The Federal Government and the taxpayers of this country become the retirement village supporters of the entire world. I do not think that is what the intent of these provisions was for. I think we have seen a real pattern of abuse here of a document that is not legally enforceable, which is the sponsorship agreement, and a tremendous number of people coming over here and using the SSI system as, in fact, the retirement system for many people all across the world. So what we have said is that we do not want to continue to have this incentive. We, as members of the Ways and Means Committee over in the other body, heard testimony on numerous occasions about how it was well known--and in fact it went throughout many refugee camps in Southeast Asia and other places; that was one of the items of testimony--about how this was this great system that America had, that you can get over here and you could array yourself in all these wonderful benefits. People should come to this country because they want the benefits of our society, not the benefits of our welfare system. I think that is where we really have to draw the line here. So I think we have held up our responsibility to the fabric of our society, which is to invite those who are in need to come here, and we will in fact help you get started. But I think we have drawn the line saying, if you want to bring a member of your family over and you sign a document saying that you will take financial responsibility for them, live up to the document, provide for them. In fact, if you want--after 5 years, under current law, you are eligible for citizenship. If you apply for citizenship, you do what is necessary to prepare yourself for citizenship, and comply and apply and pass all your tests, you can, too, be eligible for the wide variety of welfare programs that we have in this country. But, I mean, we talk in terms of people coming here for welfare. The fact is, the vast majority of people do not come here for welfare. They come here because America is the land of opportunity, and unfortunately what we have seen is because of the abuse in this area, it has caused a lot of some of the anti-immigrant feelings that are seen in many areas of the country and by many people in this country. I think what we have a responsibility to do--I joined with Senator DeWine and Senator Abraham on this side of the aisle, I know Senator Graham and others on the other side of the aisle, in not restricting the caps on immigration. I am proimmigration. I am the son of an immigrant. I am not one of these people who says, ``I'm in. OK. Close the door.'' I believe immigration is important to the future of this country. But I believe if we have programs that are abused, if we have programs that in fact call into question the immigration policy in this country, that cast a broad shadow over immigration in general, we have a responsibility to the taxpayers, No. 1, but also to the sentiment of immigration in this country, No. 2, to clean up the mess, to put a better face on immigration, to show that we have our act together in providing immigration to those who truly are in need, but not to those who are abusing the system. If we clean that up, I think we improve the image of immigration and there is less pressure on lowering those caps and doing other things that I think could be harmful with respect to the area of immigration and, I think, save the taxpayers a whole bundle of money in the process. I think those are all very positive things that happen. That is one of the reasons that this provision that is in this bill is included in the Democrat substitute and has been included in, I think, all the House bills that have been considered. I think it has very strong bipartisan support. While I think the Senator from Florida is well-intentioned and certainly is, I think, sensitive to the needs of the many thousands of immigrants who are in the State of Florida, I think we have taken a judicious swipe at this issue and have cut appropriately. I hope we will support the underlying bill and be in opposition to the amendment of the Senator from Florida. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to.

Mr. SANTORUM. I mean, I have not combed over the Finance Committee bill, but that has been my understanding all along.

Mr. SANTORUM. What I think this provision says is they are eligible for a 5-year exemption under the law, and then they have to become citizens.

Mr. SANTORUM. Yes. The Senator is absolutely right. This is different than I understood the provision to be. The difference is--and the Senator is correct--that aliens, refugees, et cetera, are eligible for 5 years until they become eligible for citizenship, and then we expect them to become citizens or they will not be eligible in the future.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, with all due respect to my friend and colleague from Connecticut, I am not too sure there is anything unwitting going on here. This was a provision that was in the Senate bill when it passed 87 to 12. It was in the conference report; it was in the original bill that was introduced. This provision has really been unchanged for quite some time and has been, as I said, not only included in the Republican bill, but the Senator from Connecticut himself stood up on the floor when the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from New York said, ``What are you guys talking about? This provision on illegal immigrants, it is in our bill. You should not be talking about that.'' I think there has been very broad support of this issue. It saves a significant amount of money. It is $18 billion. Obviously, the Senator from Florida does not have any offset there to put us within our reconciliation target, so this puts us well beyond, well under our reconciliation target, No. 1. No. 2, the Senator from Florida talks about the potential for an unfunded mandate. We have a CBO estimate here that there is no unfunded mandate here, including the provision in this bill that the bill does not provide an unfunded mandate. So we have no unfunded mandate with this provision included in the bill, No. 1. No. 2, we lose $18 billion of a $50-some-odd-billion savings in this bill with this provision. No. 3, it has been adopted on many occasions, included in both parties' bills, and we had a vote on it the last time we were here, and it was voted down. I think to suggest that someone is being hoodwinked here or that there is some substantial question as to whether this is a legitimate way to reform the system, I do not think is borne out by the history of these provisions. I think these provisions have been tested. These provisions have had broad bipartisan support. I am hopeful tomorrow that broad bipartisan support will continue.

Mr. SANTORUM. I suggest to the Senator from Connecticut that with the amendment of the Senator from Florida, that would not be; it would strike the provisions that eliminate that, that that situation could continue.

Mr. SANTORUM. I yield myself an additional 30 seconds. It is restrictive in some respects; in some it is not. We do not require in the first 5 years--in the original bill you have to do these reviews and have to provide some service, so that is not the same. The Breaux amendment in fact goes further. In the second 5 years there was an allowance in the conference report, I believe, and I can check on that, that after 5 years they could use Federal funds.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order.

Mr. SANTORUM. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. SANTORUM. In fact, Senator Bond has introduced legislation, frankly, that goes further than the sense of the Senate. Senator Bond's legislation would actually move the Senate to approve of the Wisconsin waiver and a bill similar to what passed in the House of Representatives, passed through the Senate and actually forced the President's hand on the Wisconsin waiver. That is the most publicized waiver, frankly, because the President said, and I will quote his words, in his Presidential radio address back on May 18: All in all, Wisconsin has the making of a solid, bold welfare reform plan. We should get it done. ``Get it done,'' meaning approve the waiver. I pledge that my administration will work with Wisconsin to make an effective transition to a new vision of welfare based on work, that protects children and does right by working people and their families. That is what the President said. He said he wanted to do it with the waiver. He said he was for the waiver. In fact, he went so far as to make it the real focus of his radio address to the American public. Unfortunately, his administration has not approved those waivers yet. He set an artificial deadline, he has for quite some time, of a 30-day turnaround on all waiver requests by the States. He, as the Senator from Tennessee mentioned, has not met that 30-day requirement recently. In fact, we have the Wisconsin plan and here we are in the middle of July and he has not approved what is now a 12-month-old waiver request. Unfortunately, we learn that while the President is still running around the country talking about how good the Wisconsin plan is, the President's people are saying that they are not going to approve the plan, which led Governor Thompson the other day down at the National Governors' Association to say, ``We are sort of shaking our heads, not knowing what's going on, who to believe.'' Well, in the end, I always found that it is best policy to believe what you see, not what you hear from this administration. And what you see from this administration is not approving your waiver. That is pretty concrete evidence of whether you are going to get it approved or not. The fact that they are not approving it, in effect, the bureaucrats in the administration are saying the likelihood of your getting through the approval process is not good. And it is not a simple approval process. It sounds like these waivers are no big deal; everybody gets them approved. Remember, these get approved; they get modified; they get altered a little bit; they have to sort of work with the Federal Government to make changes that they in the Federal Government believe is best for the State. In the case of Wisconsin, in order to put the plan in effect, the State requested waivers from 83 Federal provisions administered by HHS. So they needed 83 separate decisions by the Department of Health and Human Services to get those waivers. They needed five from the Department of Agriculture to get their overall waiver approved by the Federal Government. This is no small task. It is a task that, under our bill, the bill that is before the Senate right now, would be unnecessary. The Senator from Delaware, I think accurately and perceptively, questioned the Senator from Tennessee about whether this bill would make all of this rather expensive, time-consuming and inefficient process of waivers necessary in the future. If, in fact, we are going to use the States, as the States have been used recently, as incubators for changing the welfare system, we should give them more flexibility in dealing with this program. We should give them the opportunity to design programs that fit their needs, not judged by people in Washington who maybe have never set foot in that State, who do not know the particular problems in the communities, but by people who represent those communities, as Senator Abraham was talking about, the State legislators who live in those communities, who represent those people in a much smaller area, in a district in those States--those are the people who should make decisions about what the welfare system should look like; not people at Health and Human Services. So one of the reasons I wanted to sign on to this effort was to highlight the inconsistencies--not surprising to my mind--but the inconsistencies between what the President says and what the President has done on one of the most important issues before us, which is welfare reform. We have, obviously, the President's record overall on what he says and what he does on welfare, which is he runs television commercials all over the country saying he is for welfare reform and then every chance he has to sign welfare reform, he finds a reason to veto it. I hope this is not the case this time around. I am confident we will send him a bill that he certainly can sign. The question is whether he will sign it, but he certainly will talk a good game up until that point. But when the rubber hits the road, whether it is waivers or whether it is the actual bill, the President has fallen short in the area of welfare reform. Part of my reason for cosponsoring this legislation is that Pennsylvania has just recently passed welfare reform legislation. They are going to be requesting a couple of waivers from the Federal Government. They will be submitting them shortly. I am hopeful the President will go along with what Pennsylvania has wanted to do with Governor Ridge's plan to reform the welfare system and Medicaid system. To try to reduce the strain on the State budget, frankly, is one reason; but also to provide a better future for the people in Pennsylvania who are on welfare. So I congratulate the Senator from Tennessee for his efforts. I hope we can approve this amendment and send a very strong signal we want the administration to move more quickly and more efficiently when it comes to granting waivers. I reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank my friend from Tennessee. I will not take the entire 8 minutes. I rise in support of this amendment. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Bond from Missouri be added as a cosponsor.

Mr. SANTORUM. Correct.

Mr. SANTORUM. I think that was in the conference report and not the Senate bill, but I will check on that.

Mr. SANTORUM. But we do not go as far as, I believe in the wrong direction, the Breaux amendment goes at this time.

Mr. SANTORUM. No. I object.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise to alert my colleagues to an environmental restoration center at the Harrisburg International Airport, formerly Olmsted Air Force Base, located in Pennsylvania. My colleague, Congressman George Gekas, has shown great leadership on the issue of environmental restoration. In 1984, this former Air Force base was designated an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site. For the last 13 years, an intense effort under the guidance of the EPA, has been undertaken at the local, State, and Federal level to determine the nature of the origins, locations, and the proper remediation of the waste left by the U.S. Air Force. A database established at the site will enable all future site users to have an understanding of the remediation efforts undertaken. By the time all the current participants have left the site, the only remaining reliable reference source will be this database.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the chairman.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, let me move on to the issue before us of welfare reform. It is never easy to follow the Senator from New York when talking about this issue, because there is no one on the Senate floor who knows more about this issue than the Senator from New York. But I was struck by one of the comments he made. I felt compelled to respond to that comment, when he made the comment that the bill before us invites calamity. I am quoting him. He used the term ``invites calamity.'' I found it odd that he used the term, that the bill before us invites calamity, right after a very eloquent and fact-filled dissertation on the calamity that has been created by this welfare system, that calamity of illegitimacy in our civilization. He suggested there is no solution, at least we do not know the solution, and, therefore, we should not try anything. I assume that is the conclusion. Since we are not absolutely sure what causes illegitimacy, then we should not even attempt to bring it up since we do not have the answer. I suggest that the Senator from New York should have been here in the 1960's when in fact we did not know the solution for poverty but we went ahead and tried the Great Society programs anyway. We went ahead not knowing what the answers would be, and for the last 30 years, in my opinion, ignoring--ignoring--the results of the Great Society programs, the welfare component of the Great Society programs in particular. So if we are going to talk about not knowing what the future holds with the bill before us, then let us talk about not knowing back in the 1960's what the welfare state that we created would do, and now refusing to change it, when we know it has created the calamity that the Senator from New York eloquently described. He only described, in my opinion, one element of that calamity. Oh, it is a very serious one--illegitimacy. I suggest it may be the great social ill that can be the cancer within to destroy this civilization. So I think he does highlight a most important issue. It is one that we attempt to address in this bill, which I suggest we attempt to address in a very modest way. We have not gone out with a right wing extreme agenda, whatever that is, to deal with this issue. We have taken steps like saying that people who are on welfare, if they want to have more children, they should not necessarily get more money for having more children out of wedlock. The States can enact a law under our bill to pay them money if they want. But the presumption is that if you are on AFDC and you are not married, and you are receiving benefits and you have additional children, you are not automatically going to get a pay raise. The second thing we do is we look at mothers who have children out of wedlock and do not cooperate with the Government in telling us who the father is. One might suggest that that probably is not a very likely occurrence. The fact of the matter is, having visited many agencies in my State that deal with this problem, that is a very common occurrence for a variety of reasons. The most common reason is because usually there is a relationship between mom and the boyfriend. Mom does not want to jeopardize that relationship by giving the boyfriend a legal responsibility for the child. The Government is willing to pay. Why rely on a tenuous relationship, sometimes, between the boyfriend and the mom, to track down someone who may not have regular work to provide for that, when you have a Government who is going to consistently provide for that child? You may even work out something that has been told to me on many occasions, where the Government provides, and under the table the real dad provides some money, too. It works out best for everybody except for the fact that the child is without a father. That is a little glitch that somehow gets glossed over. Like it or not, in our society--I know some do not believe it-- but I think fathers are important. I think we need mothers and fathers to raise children. I happen to believe one of the big problems in our society of youth violence among young males is because we do not have fathers in the household. They do not have the example of a father to help guide them through the very difficult time of growing up. Yes, we do some things that are untested. Sure, they are untested, granted. We do not know whether making mom cooperate with authorities, forcing the mother to give us the name of the father--sanction her if she does not--will in fact help. We do not know. But, my God, we should start trying. We cannot turn our back and say, just because we do not know, we should not try. Donna Shalala says, Well, you know, there may be people who fall off welfare because they did not cooperate, and that is a tragedy for the children. What the tragedy for the children is is they have no father. That is a tragedy. We run around and we hide behind children. The liberals hide behind children, when it is the children who are hurt the worst by this system that does not care. It is not loving and compassionate. Passing out a check behind a bulletproof window in a welfare office is not compassion, is not how we solve problems in this society when it comes to the poor. We give States a bonus if they reduce their illegitimacy rate. So we provide an economic incentive for States to begin to try things to help reduce the number of illegitimate children. And they cannot do it through abortion. That is illegitimacy. That is only one of the calamities that we now have as a result of this system. How many people believe that, in the last 30 years, as a result of the welfare state, the neighborhoods in which people on welfare reside are safer, that crime is less, that the values of the people who are on welfare in second and third generations are better than they were before? If you want to look into the eyes of those values, look into the eyes of the senseless and indiscriminate juvenile crime that we see in our society, the lack of values between right and wrong, the lack of respect for human life in our society. Drugs. Are there less drugs? Are drugs less of a problem in these communities than they were 30 years ago? Is education better in these communities than it was 30 years ago? Is the family structure better than it was 30 years ago? Oh, what progress we have made, what a system we should defend. And, oh, we dare not try anything that is untested. I would agree with the Senator, maybe he is right, maybe we should not try anything that is untested, because the last time we tried something that was untested, we got a horrible result. But the problem is, we are stuck with that system right now. We must--we must--face that and change that. Here is how we change it. As I said before, we deal with the issue of illegitimacy and in a modest way--I have to repeat that--in a very modest way. Secondly, what we say is that we are going to require people who are able-bodied to work. I talked about the values in communities. One of the most important values that you can pass on to your children is a work ethic. You can pass it on by talking about it. But you parents know you can tell your children all sorts of things--I have three children; I tell them lots of things--but they are more interested in watching you and seeing what you do and following your example. How many times do you catch your kids saying things that you say, and you say, ``Gosh, do I say that that much that they actually pick it up?'' I tell them not to say it, but they say it, so I guess I do, too. I do this, so they do it, too. Work is one of those things. The most important thing for economic success for children is to have a mom and a dad--or mom or dad--go to work every day. So we require work because we think that is a value that is important for people to exit poverty. I am not interested in taking care of people on poverty as the solution to poverty. My solution to poverty is to get people out of poverty. That is how we should measure a successful system--not how many children we take care of--by how many families are no longer needed to be on the system. That, to me, is a successful poverty program, not going around looking and saying, ``Look at all the people we have on welfare and we are taking care of all these people now.'' I have not met very many people on welfare who tell me that life on welfare is a lot of fun or is what they desire for their life. Why should it be the goal of the Government to put people or to capture people in a system which they do not want to be in, and which the public resents paying for, because it is a dead end? That is not a solution. Our goal is to get people to work and to self-sufficiency, to instill the values that make America great. So, yes, after 2 years we require work. For 2 years the State, through this bill, will have resources available for education, for training, for searching jobs. There are a lot of people who get on welfare, are job-ready, and there are some that cannot, they need their GED, to get some training, it takes time. Some people take more than 2 years. The Senator from New York said we are going to put these rigid time limits on people of 2 years, and after 5 years no more benefits. The Senator from New York knows very well within this bill there is what is called a hardship exception. What the State can do is exempt 20 percent, 20 percent of the people in this program from the time limit. The time-limited program only applies to 50 percent of all the people in the program. That is not for 7 years. It starts out at 25 percent of the people. I know it is a lot of numbers, but let me suggest there is lots of flexibility here for hard cases, for people who are really trying, and just cannot seem to find a job. We understand that happens. We understand it happens in a lot of urban areas and rural areas where unemployment is scarce. We provide an exception, but it is an exception to the rule. Sometimes it is important to establish a rule, an expectation of what we desire out of everyone. Set the bar a little higher. Instead of just saying you are all incapable of providing for yourself, so we will provide for you. I ask the Senator from New Mexico for 3 additional minutes.