Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, the amendment that I have is not an elimination of the peanut program. What is does is it phases down the support price for peanuts 30 percent over the next 5 years and then replaces the quota system with a nonrecourse loan system. So there will still be a peanut program, a safety net program. The only commodity in the last 10, 15 years that has not been reformed is peanuts. It is the only one that has gone up in price since 1985. For everything else the support prices have been cut but not peanuts. Peanuts is still run with a quota system. That means you have to have a license to grow peanuts, and, if you do not have that license, you cannot sell peanuts in this country. What we want to do is just reform it slightly over the next 7 years to really comport with the other programs that are going through reform, and I urge an affirmative vote to send a good message on this program. Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from New Hampshire. Comments were made that this program is good for consumers. I do not think higher prices are good for consumers. I can tell you one thing. It is not good for workers. We had two sugar refineries in Philadelphia that closed in the 1980's as a result of this sugar program and the high cost of sugar that they had to deal with--1,500 jobs in the city of Philadelphia gone as a result of this program. I hear so much about these small family farms. I am for small family farmers. What about families who work in these refineries that are going out of business, like the ones that are threatened in Georgia and in Maryland and in other places around this country because of this sugar program? Let us not just look to the farmers. Let us look to the workers who want to have jobs processing this sugar and confectioners who want to use this sugar instead of having to send those jobs to Canada or Mexico where they can buy cheap sugar and cheap peanuts and other things they use in making candy. Those are the kinds of issues we should be looking at, not just one segment of the matter.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 1, 1996, beginning at 9 a.m. until business is completed, to hold a hearing on campaign finance reform.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, February 1, 1996, to consider the nomination of Gen. Henry H. Shelton, USA for appointment to the grade of general and to be commander in chief, U.S. Special Operations Command and Lt. Gen. Eugene E. Habiger, USAF for appointment to the grade of general and to be commander in chief, U.S. Strategic Command.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 1, 1996, at 2 p.m. to hold a closed hearing on intelligence matters.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair.

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

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I wanted to follow up the remarks of my senior Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Specter], and talk about the problems that we are having in Pennsylvania today. The first thing I wanted to do was make sure the record is very clear in my use of the word ``liberal.'' I suggested that FEMA be more liberal than what they have been to date, as of early this morning, in declaring counties in Pennsylvania eligible for individual assistance, for emergency disaster relief funds. I think that was an appropriate call given the fact that the Governor of Pennsylvania, who knows a little bit about the Emergency Relief Act that is in place here because he helped write it several years ago and knows it cover to cover, declared 58 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties disaster areas and was seeking Federal grant recognition for, if not all, certainly a great majority of those counties. Senator Specter, I know, has been traveling the State extensively, as have I. We have seen the tremendous damage done by this heavy snowfall and subsequent quick melting and floods and then freezing again, causing ice jams and horrible damage on our Commonwealth's rivers and streams. We do believe that several more counties should be included in the list that are eligible for individual assistance, and obviously the process will commence to determine whether those counties and municipalities will be eligible for public assistance, for reimbursing municipalities and counties for the cost of cleanup and dealing with the problems of this horrible storm. I understand that the senior Senator has already talked about how today James Lee Witt, the head of FEMA, has been up to the State of Pennsylvania and he has added to the list of 6 counties an additional 19 counties, bringing to 25 the number of counties that will now be eligible for some assistance. We were in Harrisburg this morning. I know he mentioned we saw some of the devastation on City Island, which is a recreational park in Harrisburg that is just literally covered with big boulders of ice and destroying all the public buildings there that I would say are relatively brand new. They in the last 10 years constructed a AA baseball stadium there that is severely damaged from ice. That has really made this disaster a lot different because Harrisburg was hit back in 1972 with very severe flooding as a result of Hurricane Agnes. In fact, the mayor and others have been telling us that while the flood levels were not as high as Hurricane Agnes, although in some areas they were almost as high, the damage, they believe, actually will be more because of the ice. Literally, Senator Specter and I were walking around an area that was 5 feet underwater just 24 hours before, and sitting there all over the place were boulders of ice almost my size and probably bigger, with trees frozen to them. It was really a rather gruesome picture. You could actually see the water level because on the houses and the fences and on the trees you could see where the ice had frozen around the tree, around the houses, sort of jutting out from the houses. So you could pretty well tell everywhere where the water levels had risen to. We were through that area and saw the damage that the ice had caused to streets and to houses, the buckling effect of having water there and then freezing and then unfreezing. It looks almost like an earthquake on some of the roads; they are just sort of warped, with big sinkholes and things like that as a result of this freezing and thawing and freezing again and the amount of water pressure. In fact, Senator Specter and I met with Mayor Reed of Harrisburg, whom I have to commend; he has done a tremendous job in rallying the troops in Harrisburg, one of our hardest hit cities, and is doing an outstanding job personally. He is someone whom I have known for quite some time and know he puts every ounce of his person in his job. I am sure he has not slept for days. He met us in boots and blue jeans and looked like he had not been able to get into his house, probably even to eat a meal, in a few days. He has really just been on the go. They had a horrible fire in this area I was talking about that was 5 feet under water. They had, unfortunately, a fire break out last night that destroyed four historic town homes. And luckily no one was injured. The area was evacuated obviously and no one was injured as a resident. But several of the firefighters, they had to cut their way through the ice and wade through water, waist high at that time, and fight the fire without obviously any fire hoses. They had to string them literally blocks to get fire hoses there. My understanding is that a dozen firefighters were carried from the scene with hypothermia--a horrible situation. I know Mayor Reed was there the entire time working on it. He showed us the Walnut Street bridge, which is the oldest--I am not going to get this right--it is the oldest of some type of bridge having to do with metal construction. That bridge was expected to collapse during the 1972 flood when actually the river went up over the platform of the bridge. In this case it was several feet below it. But a section of the bridge--you may have seen on television--was knocked away. The reason was not because of the water flow. Again, it was the ice jams. An ice jam had a large amount of ice collected at this one abutment, and eventually with all the pressure it was knocked over, was knocked into the river. They expect another one of those pillars to fall relatively soon. So there has been a severe amount of damage. Senator Specter and I are very concerned about the Federal response to the damage across Pennsylvania. We believe that in some instances the response was delayed. I know the President would like to see all the people and communities that have been severely hurt by this storm to get the kind of assistance that they need to begin to clean up and rebuild their lives. I am hopeful that we can move forward. As Senator Specter said, initially only six counties were listed as qualifying for this assistance. One of the counties that did not qualify originally, and did not qualify until this afternoon, was a county where there were 6 people known dead, 75 people missing from an area that was a large housing development that was literally just swept away. Water rose rapidly. People were given no warning. The consequences were terrible. Yet that county was not listed originally on the disaster list, which amazed many of us and frankly was very discouraging. I had occasion to talk to people up in Williamsport, Lycoming County. And they were very discouraged. Somehow they were suffering to this degree, and in fact accounted, from my understanding, for over half the deaths related to this storm in the Northeast, and yet were not listed as a county eligible for disaster assistance. That caused some legitimate uneasiness to where actually their needs and concerns were being paid attention to. I am happy to report they were listed in the second round. There are other counties that we need to look at that I believe have legitimate needs to be met. Hopefully we can do that, we can do that expeditiously. I want to join Senator Specter in congratulating Secretary Pena and Director Witt for being up in Pennsylvania today to survey the damage, to see the extent of what seemed to be just a flood. I remind you the compounding effect of the ice is something I do not think anyone recognized. I was in Lancaster County, which unfortunately has yet to be declared a disaster county. I was in Marietta which was flooded, at least the parts nearest the river were flooded. Their big concern right now is the freezing that is going on. They were flooded. They have something like a dike. It is actually a railroad track that runs between the river and the town that is very high up and serves like a dike. But they got flooded through their storm sewers, and the water reaching its level filled up both sides of the dike. Now they are concerned with the storm sewers. Because of the very cold temperatures, they are now frozen. If they get any more rain, which is anticipated tomorrow, or any other precipitation, they will have the same problem all over again. Many counties and many cities, they have that same problem with either frozen surface areas that prevent water from draining or the infrastructure underneath the ground itself containing ice and frozen debris is going to cause a real problem with drainage. So we are not out of the woods yet. There is unfortunately still a lot of snow on the ground. The possibility exists, with the warm weather today, we could even see some more problems. So I want to congratulate Governor Ridge and Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker for their tremendous role in responding to this emergency. They have been all over the State, have been very aggressive in trying to seek aid, and have also been very aggressive in trying to help municipalities trying to deal with the problems that have beset them. I think we have seen a very good effort on the part of locally elected officials, and the Governor and Lieutenant Governor. I think-- at least I hope that we can be proud of the Federal role that is being played in Pennsylvania. I think we are coming along a little slowly, but maybe today with some fly-arounds and other things that are going on, we can impress upon officials here in Washington and in the regional office that this is a true emergency, a disaster that needs to be attended to, and the Federal Government has a role to play in helping those individuals and municipalities that were affected by it. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask unanimous consent that I be able to speak for 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President.

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

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I thank the chairman. As I said before, we spend more money on child protection services, No. 1. No. 2, we allow so much. So much has been made about the Elisa case in New York, a tragic case. But one of the reasons that case happened is because police agencies and social agencies cannot share information about abuse. In this bill you can. And it was not even in the Senate bill, an improvement over the Senate provisions. We gave a concession from the conference report that appeared in the reconciliation bill to current law standards for child protection and citizen review panels, again another concession to the other side. We gave again greater flexibility to use administrative funds on services, something that cannot be done today. Fifty percent of all the money spent in child protection is spent on administrative and overhead costs--50 percent. No wonder a lot of people do not want to change it because a lot of people make a lot of money off child protection services in this country. Fifty percent is spent on staffing. What we do is we give a block grant and allow that money to be used for services, allow that money to be used to help direct payments to people who need assistance, again a dramatic departure, something I know many people on the other side of the aisle want to see done. We think this bill not only is a better bill than passed the House-- much better--a better bill than passed the Senate but moves more in the direction of Members on the other side of the aisle. I am absolutely astounded to hear Members get up and talk about how this bill is worse than what passed the Senate. It is not. It moves much more toward the Democratic side of the aisle, and I urge their support.

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I do not know where to begin. Last night I spoke at length about the difference between the Senate bill that passed and the bill that is now before us. I think I laid out the points, but I will try to be consistent and lay them out today. The bill that is before us actually moves more toward the Democratic side than the bill that we passed here. I am somewhat at a loss as to why we see all these objections raised here when if you go down the changes that were made in the conference, we actually move toward the Democratic side of the aisle than the bill that passed the Senate. I will go through them. If you look at child care, so much is being talked about in child care. The child care funding in this bill is more than the child care funding that passed under the original Senate bill. In fact, over the first 5 years in the Senate bill that passed child care funding was $15.8 billion. Under this bill, it is $16.3 billion. Over 7 years we spend $1 billion more in child care under the conference report than we did in the Senate bill. I do not understand the concerns that somehow we are now shortchanging child care when before we had adequate child care dollars. We have more money in child care. Second, maintenance of effort. We heard so much concern and consternation about the maintenance-of-effort provision. There was a 75 percent maintenance-of-effort provision in here, which is exactly what both sides agreed was an adequate level for State support in the Senate bill. Again, I do not understand the concerns. We kept the Senate proposal. Third, funding. We talked about this welfare program being slashed. I refer you to this chart. Here is welfare funding today. Under current law, it will go up by 58 percent. Under our bill, it goes up 34 percent. That is 4 percent a year. That is almost twice the rate of inflation. Welfare spending will go up under this bill. If anyone is concerned, yes, welfare spending will go up, but we have more people in the system. No. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has said that under our bill, the number of people in the system will be maintained at a constant level. There will not be an increase. Therefore, spending per person in welfare will go up over the next 7 years. We will have more child care. We will have a maintenance of effort. Spending will go up under this bill. You would think that I am describing the Democratic proposal. But, no, we are describing the conference report. The work requirements that so many people on both sides of the aisle wanted are the same in the Senate bill. We kept the entitlement to school lunches. We kept the entitlement to family-based nutrition programs, something desperately wanted by the other side of the aisle that was not in the House bill. The House conceded to us on that. We kept title requirements. In fact, we put in title requirements for food stamp block grant eligibility. In the Senate bill we passed a block grant option for food stamps given to all States. Under the conference report, we make it much tougher to get a block grant of food stamps, and we put very tough error rate standards in there, so many States will not, in fact, be able to qualify, something many Members on the Democratic side of the aisle wanted to see. We kept the population growth fund intact, which many Members on the other side wanted. Contingency funds for employment--the same as in the Senate bill. We kept ``no transferring out'' of the child care block grant, something that was very important to Members on the other side of the aisle. Every dollar in child care must be spent in child care. And, in fact, there can be a transfer of money but only into child care, not out of child care. I heard a concern about SSI and about throwing children off SSI. I would remind Senators on the Democratic side of the aisle that the same provisions that are in this bill were in the Democratic substitute on this floor and voted for by every Member on the other side of the aisle. Those same children not being cut off was something that every Member on the other side of the aisle voted for in their substitute and the 87 Members of this body voted for in the Senate bill--the same provision. The only difference in the children portion of the SSI bill is that for children who do not need round-the-clock care to be able to stay at home, we reduce the amount of benefit by 25 percent. I would remind Members that the adult benefit for SSI, which is supposed to be an income supplement to maintain someone who is an adult so they can live independently, is the same amount that a child gets when living at home. So what we said is that, if you are a child living at home which does not need 24-hour care but is still considered disabled, we are going to reduce your benefit somewhat versus a child that needs 24-hour child care. We think that is a reasonable thing to do, and certainly it is not going to be hurting children. A lot has been made about the child protection portion of this bill. We do some tremendous things. First of all, we spend more money on child protection in this bill than in the Senate bill. The Senate bill that passed that got 87 votes cut $1.3 billion out of this program. The conference report cuts $0.4 billion. We spend more money on child protection services. We allow in this agreement so much that has been talked about. I ask for an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I would like to make a few comments about the vote today on the welfare reform bill. Several people have talked to me about it and have expressed concern that we did not receive the bipartisan support in this piece of legislation that we had in the original Senate bill. I want to reflect on that for a few moments and discuss how we might be able to bridge the gap and what kind of gap it is that now keeps us apart on the welfare issue. First, I would like to thank the Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle who supported the conference report. I think they will be very proud of the vote they cast as a real step forward for moving this country toward a kind of reform in the welfare system that the American public and the people who are now in the welfare system or may find themselves at some point in time in their life to be in need of the welfare system have been asking for for a long time. My impression of what went on--just from listening to the debate and the comments of Members who eventually voted against the legislation-- was that for the most part Members who voted against this legislation, on the other side of the aisle in particular, were people who felt that they had to vote against it and they were sort of looking for a reason why. You say, what do you mean they had to vote against it? The President came out yesterday morning and said he was going to veto the legislation. I think I understand why the President did that. I am not too sure I think that the President is vetoing this legislation because he substantively disagrees with it on so many counts, but more that I think he sees welfare as being included in these negotiations that are going on right now in the budget package, and to sign a separate welfare bill sort of takes welfare off the table in the bargaining between all the other programs that are being considered in trying to balance the budget. I think what the President wanted to do--and I think many Members on the other side agreed with it--is they wanted to keep welfare in play in the greater negotiations, and to sign off on one package without having the interaction of the other programs yet to be determined would, in their estimation, be an unwise move. So I will say to them, it is my firm belief that is what is going on here--I will explain that later--that this was more of a tactical move in opposition to this legislation than it really was a substantive move that this legislation somehow did not meet the test of welfare reform as defined by most Members on both sides of the aisle. It was interesting for me to note that the people who debated the welfare reform bill here on the floor the last day, last night and today, by and large were the 12 people who voted against the legislation when it first came through. So the principal opponents, at least the most vocal opponents, on the other side of the aisle were all people who voted against the Senate- passed bill, which got 87 votes; and in fact, the only two people that I can recollect who debated the bill this morning who had previously supported the bill did so on very narrow and limited grounds. In fact, I have had discussions with those Members subsequently--at least one of them--and think some of the grounds on which they base their opposition actually did not square with the facts. I am not saying that the Senators misrepresented the facts. I am not saying that at all. I think in this case, because this bill was moved over here so quickly, a lot of the factual information that was in the bill did not get out in proper fashion, and there were changes made to the bill in the last couple of days that were simply not disseminated to the other side. I think there was some misunderstanding, particularly in the area of child care funding, and a look at the facts, I think, would satisfy some of the concerns of Members on the other side of the aisle. I want to go through the points that were made about the welfare bill as reasons for opposing it and try to explain why those concerns may not have been as legitimate as some would have originally suggested. Some, I believe, are legitimate. I think there was one concern in particular that I know concerned Members on this side of the aisle and, I think, was the result of the two negative votes over here and, I think, concerned many Members and could be a legitimate reason to, in a sense, hang your hat on opposition to this proposal and actually speaks for including welfare in the larger budget package. What I am referring to is the Medicaid portion or the Medicaid reference in the welfare bill. It was asked by the Governors and others who were negotiating the Medicaid portion of the Balanced Budget Act that we, for purposes of welfare, do not guarantee anyone who is on AFDC, guarantee them coverage under Medicaid automatically. That is current law, that if you qualify for AFDC, mothers and children automatically qualify for Medicaid. Governors have said that now they are in the process during this budget debate of working out amongst themselves and Members of Congress to give some more flexibility in establishing who must qualify for Medicaid and allowing them the flexibility to make some of their own determinations. So they asked, for purposes of this bill, do not lock them in quite yet on guaranteeing Medicaid coverage for AFDC recipients when, in fact, they are negotiating that very issue in their Medicaid discussions. So, as a result, because this bill moved ahead of the rest of the package, we left that provision out and said that is to be negotiated with Medicaid, not with welfare. As a result, many Members seized upon this and said, ``Oh, what we're doing here is unprecedented. It was not in the House bill, it was in the Senate bill. We are cutting off, in the welfare bill, all these people from Medicaid.'' Well, in a sense that is not completely true. But it certainly makes for a very good reason to vote against this bill even though you can make several arguments against that point. One is the obvious one I think I have already made in detailing what the problem was; that that decision is going to be made later, and, in fact, it may very well say in the Medicaid bill that AFDC recipients are covered. That is a decision that is going to be made later. It is not that we are making the decision here affirmatively; it is a decision that will be made, but this was not the appropriate vehicle to make it. That does not soothe, I know, a lot of people, but it is in a sense an accurate description of what is going on. The other point is--or several other points--according to the Congressional Budget Office, all of the children who are on AFDC today would otherwise qualify for Medicaid even if the current legislation which just passed here were signed by the President. That is, children, poor children, would qualify under the Medicaid statute, not under the AFDC statute, and therefore would be eligible for Medicaid even if they were not automatically eligible as a result of receiving AFDC. So children would have been covered anyway. So to say, as some Members said, we are cutting off children by this is not an accurate description of at least what the Congressional Budget Office interpreted. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office scored this welfare bill as having all the existing children eligible for Medicaid. For example, the Congressional Budget Office said that approximately half of the women--again, most AFDC recipient parents are women--half of the women on AFDC would automatically--or I should not say automatically--would otherwise qualify for Medicaid because of their status without the automatic qualification under AFDC. So that leaves a block of about half of the women who currently receive AFDC, who qualify under AFDC, who would not otherwise qualify for Medicaid. That is a legitimate debate, and I think Members cited that. It is a legitimate debate as to whether this is the right approach to take. My only point was--and I will go back to the first point I made--that is an issue to be decided in the Medicaid debate, not in the welfare debate, and it is in the process of being decided. So we have that as, I think, the principal stumbling block and the reason that most Members will be able to go back and say this is why this bill was substantively different than the bill that passed the Senate because, if you look at everything else, if you look at all the other provisions of the welfare reform bill and match it up against the welfare reform bill that passed here with 87-87 votes, there is nary a reason for a dissenting vote of anyone who gave assent the first time. In fact, I would suggest that most of the concerns--or many; I should not say most--many of the concerns that were raised on the other side about the potential toughness of the welfare reform bill were solved by the addition, for example, of 1 billion extra dollars in child care. Some comments were made by Members on the other side that child care funding was cut. The Senator from Massachusetts and I had a discussion about that last night, and I attempted to clarify that. I will do it one more time. The Senate bill that passed last--I guess a few months ago; I do not know exactly the month--had $8 billion for child care, mandatory child care spending for the first 5 years and $2 billion in the sixth and seventh years combined; so a total of 10 billion in mandatory entitlement child care dollars. Under the conference bill, in the first 5 years, there was $7.8 billion, not $8 billion as in the original bill, but $7.8 billion, $200 million less, in the first 5 years. However, in the next 2 years, instead of having $2 billion for child care, there was $3.2 billion for child care. So in a sense, we took $200 million and shifted it forward to the sixth and seventh year and added an additional billion dollars for child care. So there is, overall, more money over the 7 years, just $200 million less in the first 5, but we shifted it, we did not lose it; we shifted it to the sixth and seventh year. Why did we do that? We did it because the Governors asked us to do it. You say, ``Why would the Governors ask for the money further out?'' The reason is because the participation standards--now what is that? That is the percentage of people who go on to welfare who are going to be required to go to work. Not everyone who goes on welfare is going to be required to go to work. In fact, in the first year, I believe the number is 20 percent of the people who go on welfare, the States will collect only 20 percent of the caseload and say, ``You will be in the time-limited program, the other 80 percent will be in the old welfare program.'' That will phase up 5 percent a year until we reach 50 percent. When this program is fully phased in, 50 percent of the people who come on to the welfare rolls will be put in a time-limited welfare program. The other 50 percent will be in the existing program, no time limit. But because it phases in over time and because anyone who is in a time-limited program when you go in--if you are one of the 20 percent next year that goes into the welfare program, under the law as drafted, you get 2 years of AFDC without having to work. So no one will be required to work under this law--since the block grant in this bill does not go into effect until October 1, 1996--so the first person who walks into the door on October 1, 1996 who is now subject to this law, 2 years later is October 1998, that is the first person who has to work under this law. And, again, 20 percent of the caseload will have to do that, and many of those 20 percent, obviously, will have found work or gotten off the program anyway, so it is only a small percentage of the 20 percent. What am I saying? The reason they want to backload it is because as participation rates increase, the number of people who are going to need day care because of the work requirements will increase in the outyears. So they really do not need day care funding as much next year or the year after or the year after. It is not until the year 2000, 2001, 2002 that the day care funds really are needed in larger amounts. That is why we pushed the money back. So I think it was somewhat--well, let us just say erroneous for some reason for Members to argue that there were cuts in day care funds when, in fact, we added more money and put it in the years where we believe the money was to be needed. So the two major criticisms that I heard on the floor, one being the Medicaid issue and the other being the issue with child care, I think, were not necessarily made accurately. If I can just make a couple more comments about the Medicaid issue. The one other thing I wanted to mention on Medicaid is that there are several States that have gotten Medicaid waivers already to be able to determine eligibility. They have gotten waivers from the Federal Government to enact their own Medicaid plan and to create their own eligibility standards for who qualifies for Medicaid. All of the States that have done that have actually expanded eligibility. Let me repeat that. States who have actually gotten waivers and have been given the opportunity to redetermine who is eligible or not have actually not cut people from the Medicaid rolls but have actually expanded the Medicaid rolls. So the concern that somehow or another if we do not require AFDC recipients to be included in Medicaid that States will immediately rush to cut them off is not borne out by the experiences of the States, like Tennessee and others that have gone forward with their own Medicaid waivers. That is just an additional point that I think should have been noted. There were a couple other things that were mentioned that I want to discuss. Those are the two major issues. So you can see from the discussion that we are really not that far apart on the big issues. In fact, I suggest we, in fact, moved in their direction on one of those two issues, and the other one is going to be debated in the Medicaid debate. The Democratic leader said that there were cuts in the EITC, the earned income tax credit. That is true. There was a cut in the earned income tax credit. When I say cut, we reduced the rate of growth. That program is expanding tremendously, and we cut back somewhat in the growth in that program, but it is not in this bill. I do not know whether he suggested that it was or that it is coming later, but he did mention in his statement we cut the earned income tax credit. I just wanted to state for the record that the earned income tax credit is not in the welfare bill; it is not in the bill we voted on. I think that just needs to be clarified for the purposes of the record. The other comment that I heard on the floor was that we changed the SSI provisions to reduce benefits to some children and knock off the SSI rolls other children. Two comments. With respect to knocking off children who are on SSI right now, SSI being supplemental security income--children who have disabilities qualify for SSI and who are in poor families. They qualify for roughly $458 a month, plus Medicaid, plus food stamps and other services. What we have done is something that was in the original Senate bill that passed with 87 votes, as far as redetermining who are truly disabled and should be eligible. That provision passed in the Senate with 87 votes. It was included in the Democratic substitute welfare proposal. That exact language was included in the Democratic substitute, both in the House and the Senate, I might add. The House had the same language. It got the support of every Democratic Senator at one point in time. So I do not think there is a dispute that these children who came in and got on SSI as a result of what were individual functional assessments, that those children should no longer be covered under SSI. In fact, there was never even an amendment offered to change that standard. So we can put that issue aside. The other issue is a legitimate one, and that is that we have reduced payments to some children who are still considered disabled under SSI. Let me explain to you how that occurred. In the Senate bill, all children who qualified for SSI received the full $458 a month. That is an SSI benefit. That is an SSI benefit whether you are an adult or child. SSI was originally created to be a supplemental income program. That is what it is, supplemental security income. It was supposed to be a supplemental security income program for adults who are disabled and, obviously, not able to work. So we provided this money for them to be able to support themselves. Children have been included in that but get the same amount of money as an adult who, with that money, must support themselves. Obviously, children do not have to support themselves. Many of the families of children who are on SSI are on AFDC and other government support programs. Some of them are working families, working poor, and qualify as poor and, therefore, their children are eligible for SSI. So that is not the sole source of income to support that child, yet they get the same amount of money as an adult who must use that as their sole means of support. So what we said in looking at how we could compromise with the House--and what the House had done was take children who qualified for SSI and divided them into two categories: The first category being those who needed 24-hour care or care that if they did not get would have been institutionalized. They would continue to receive cash. Everyone else would get no cash. They would still be eligible for SSI, but they would get no cash. What they would get is they would be eligible for amounts of funds that were then going to be block granted to States, and the States could provide services to them to meet the needs of their disability. Well, there are many Members on this side of the building who had problems with no cash for these less severely disabled children, and we did not like the idea of the block grant. A lot of disability advocates did not like the idea of a block grant. So what we did is--and Senator Chafee worked very hard on this, and I gave him credit for that last night when I talked--we fought very hard on this to keep the cash assistance for all disabled children. But we recognized--and this is the concession we gave to the House--that there were varying degrees of disability, and a child with disabilities that did not require additional attention from the parents to be able to stay at home and live at home, obviously, did not need the kind of cash resources like the more severely disabled children. So we created a differentiation between those who need more constant home care from the parent, which would, in a sense, take the parent from the job market and require them to stay at home, and the children who were disabled but do not require that kind of constant attention, and that is therefore not as much of a drain on the parents to provide for them. So we created that very small difference, which is a 25-percent reduction in benefits. They still receive cash assistance, but they only receive 75 percent of the full SSI payment. We think that was a very reasonable compromise. I can understand how some Members would like to see the full 100 percent. But we think that was a reasonable compromise between what the House and the Senate had come up with. The final point I wanted to make is in the area of child protection. There were comments made about how we are taking foster care and adoption and family protection services and slashing them under this bill. I will state for the Record, again, that under the House bill, this area was block granted completely. All of the services provided under that title were block granted and cut by $2.3 billion over the next 7 years. In the Senate bill, we did not have any provision on this issue, except that we cut $1.3 billion from this area to help finance the rest of the bill. We did not deal with any reforms in the area. We simply took some money out of one section of the child protection area; $1.3 billion was the cut here. In the conference report, we did not cut $2.3 billion, we did not cut $1.3 billion, we cut $400 million. So the bill that Members voted for here--87 Members voted for it--actually cut the area of adoption and foster care and child protection more than the bill that they now objected to as cutting too much. So, again, I question whether all of that information really was sufficiently discussed and debated and gotten to Members on both sides of the aisle before their votes were cast. The other point I wanted to make is that the entitlements to maintenance payments for adoption and foster care remained entitlements in the conference report. They were not in the House bill, but we negotiated and maintained the direct payments to children for adoption and foster care as an entitlement under this bill, which we think was very important, and was a step in the direction of those who had concerns about the block grant. The area we block granted, I say to Members, is that in the child protection area, 50 percent of all the money spent in that area is spent on administrative overhead expenses. Fifty percent does not get to the children. It is all very overhead- intensive. What we have done is given the States the flexibility, through the block grant, to eliminate a lot of this overhead expense and get a lot more direct services to the children in need. We also allow for agencies like the police and the social service agency to communicate with each other, which is not allowed under current law. We think we have taken dramatic steps forward in this area in which we have seen some miserable results in recent months, from the Chicago case to this horrible tragedy of this young girl, Alyssa, in New York, to other tragedies which we are all familiar with in our States. So we believe this is an area that is ripe for new developments and changes. We allow for that in this bill. In conclusion, I want to say that I think the real differences between the Republicans and the Democrats on the welfare issue come down now to more tactical reasons for not supporting this bill than they do substantive reasons. Again, I am not questioning whether or not it is a legitimate reason to oppose the bill. In fact, I say it very may well be a legitimate reason to oppose this bill. All I am suggesting is that those who voted against this conference report examine it for the particulars that are in here, and look at it in terms of not saying that we have to scrap this and start all over again, when, in fact, I think we have substantial agreement here, and that if we can make some modifications in a couple of the areas that I suggested, and that, in fact, we can find a workable compromise that not only will many Members on the other side of the aisle and, hopefully, all our Members on this side, will be able to support enthusiastically, but one that the President could support and one that we can include in the Balanced Budget Act of, hopefully 1995--maybe 1996, the way things are going. I thank the Senator from Georgia for his indulgence. I know he has been waiting. I yield the floor. Mr. NUNN addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator from Massachusetts yield for a question?

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts. I just want to clear----

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator from Massachusetts yield for a question?

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair for his indulgence. We allow the States to opt out of the requirement of a family cap. That may sound tough. We say that you have to have a family cap provision in your welfare. But you can pass legislation in your legislature signed by the Governor that would remove you from that requirement. In actuality, what this provision does, since, as a result of the Brown amendment legislatures and Governors have to pass bills to implement and spend this money, what we in a sense require is a vote on this provision in the legislature. Since the legislature is going to act anyway, all we say here is that the legislature has to make a decision whether to allow a family cap or not, and, if they say no family cap, the family cap goes out. If they want it, it goes in. All we do is force the decision. That is hardly a burdensome addition to this legislation. We have all sorts of terrific reforms on child support enforcement and maternity establishment and absentee parents. All were in the Senate bill. All were heartily supported by both sides of the aisle. All are in the conference report. Nutrition programs--in the Senate bill we had a block grant option for States for food stamps. That was not very popular on the Democratic side of the aisle. Many Members did not like the option for food stamps that passed the Senate and objected to it. We have reduced the opportunity for States to get into a block grant by putting up very stringent accountability requirements for fraud and error rates, tough error rates than frankly most States will be able to meet. So the open ended allowance for block granting food stamps has been really drawn back; Again, it is something that moves to the Democrat side of the aisle on this bill. In return for that, the House did not want to block grant the food stamps, but they wanted to block grant nutritional programs for schools, a hotly debated topic. So what we did there is allow a seven- State demonstration project for block granting school lunch programs, a very narrow block granted program with very tough requirement on the State. We added back, I might add, in response to the Senator from Massachusetts, who said that we dramatically reduced nutrition funding--and, again, this is where maybe the haste in bringing this bill to the floor resulted in faulty information getting into the hands of Senators. We added back $1.5 billion to nutrition programs, the exact amount that many Senators who had been negotiating on this welfare bill on the Democratic side of the aisle asked for--$1.5 billion was asked for; $1.5 billion was put in the nutritional programs. SSI. This was an interesting area of debate for me because I have worked on this issue now for close to 4 years and was a very contentious issue when Congressman McCrery from Louisiana and Congressman Kleczka from Wisconsin and I broached this situation in the Ways and Means Committee, and we have come a long way since then. In fact, we came so far that the SSI provisions that are included in this bill were the same SSI provisions that were included in the Democratic alternative welfare bill. There was not an amendment in the Chamber discussing the reduction of the number of children, drug addicts, alcoholics who qualify for SSI. I have heard in some of the reports, criticisms from some now saying that we cut children off SSI. I would just suggest that the same children that are removed from the SSI rolls under this bill were the same children that were removed from SSI under the bill that I believe every Member of the other side of the aisle voted for, their own substitute--same language. So there is no argument there, I do not believe, unless there is a newfound argument. Very legitimate change in the SSI Program due to a court decision which we have discussed on the floor many times. We have, in fact, loosened the provisions in this bill from the provision that passed the Senate just a few months ago. We said with respect to noncitizens in SSI that they would never be eligible for SSI until they had worked 40 quarters and would be eligible through the Social Security System. We now allow for people who are noncitizens, legal noncitizens to qualify for SSI benefits if they become a citizen. So citizenship, something many Members on the Democratic side of the aisle voted for in an amendment that was here that was narrowly defeated in the Chamber, we have now conceded the point that they lost here on the Senate floor and loosened the eligibility requirements for SSI, another reason we have moved more toward them as opposed to away from them in this bill. One thing that we did add is we added to the SSI requirement for legal noncitizens--I should not say requirement, the SSI ineligibility for legal noncitizens, the State has an option as it did in the original bill to eliminate cash welfare, Medicaid and title 20 services if they so desire. If you look at probably the last argument that Members of the other side will have in searching for reasons not to vote for this legislation, it will be that we end the tie between welfare, people on AFDC and Medicaid. For the clarification of Members, if you qualify for AFDC, you automatically as a result of your eligibility for AFDC become eligible for an array of benefits--food stamps, Medicaid, potentially housing. What we have done, since we are block granting Medicaid to the States, we are going to say to the States that they will be able to determine eligibility for their program. And that includes whether they want to make people who are on AFDC eligible for their program. Obviously, most Governors will tell you that they will. But even if they do not, which I think is unlikely, but even if they do not, the Congressional Budget Office has scored this provision, this decoupling of AFDC and Medicaid, have scored this provision on the following assumption: that all the children who now are on AFDC and qualify for AFDC will qualify for Medicaid under some other provision in law other than AFDC. So all of the children that are now qualified under AFDC will qualify anyway under some other avenue, and it is so scored. So when you hear the comments over here that all these children will be cut off of health care, not true, not according to the Congressional Budget Office and not according to at least many of the Governors' understanding of the current law. And again according to the Congressional Budget Office, slightly over half of the women in this program will automatically qualify for Medicaid from some other avenue other than AFDC. The rest will have to qualify under the new State standards. And as I said before, and I think Senator Hutchison from Texas said it very well, even though the Governor from Texas went to Yale and not the University of Texas or Penn State, I am sure the Governor of Texas and Governor of Pennsylvania have concern for their citizens and mothers trying to raise children in very difficult circumstances and recognize the need for the State to provide adequate medical attention. And to suggest otherwise I think goes back to the days of thinking of Southern Governors standing in front of the courthouse not letting people in because of the color of their skin. Those days are gone, and I would think that hearkening back to those kinds of days in this kind of debate does not lift the content of the debate to a credible level. That is it. Those are the differences between H.R. 4, as passed by the Senate, and H.R. 4 as before us now, hardly startling differences that would send people rushing to the exits to get away from this horribly transformed piece of legislation. This piece of legislation was crafted to pass the Senate with a margin very similar to the margin that passed originally, with those who would examine the content of this legislation and vote for it on its merits not because of pressure from the White House due to an expected veto. On the merits, this bill matches up very well with what passed just a very short time ago. On the merits, this is a bill that all of us can be proud of, that is going to change the dynamic for millions of citizens to put that ladder all the way down, to create opportunities for everyone in America to climb that ladder, as my grandfather and my father did, who lived in a company town, Tire Hill, PA, right at the mouth of a coal mine, got paid in stamps to use at the company store, and in one generation, in one generation in America lived to see their son in this Chamber. That is the greatness of America. That is what this whole welfare reform bill is all about. I can tell you because I was in those discussions. I have been in those discussions on the House floor 2 years ago. I was in those discussions here during the Senate debate, in the back rooms where we worked on all the details of this bill; we crafted the compromises, every step of the way from the original introduction of the House bill 2 years ago to the final compromise in the conference. I can tell you with a straight face that when we made decisions on what to put in this legislation, not just the principal, but the sole reason for changing the welfare system from what it is to what I hope it will be was not the dollars that were saved but the people it would help and the lives that would change for the better. This is not about balancing the budget. This is about creating opportunity and changing the face of America, changing the word ``welfare'' from that disparaged term to one that we can all be proud of, that we can all say, yes, America can work to help everybody reach up for more. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 10 minutes.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, again I want to restate my admiration for the Senator from Delaware and for the members of the Finance Committee staff for their tremendous work in this legislation and for hastily preparing Members for this debate this evening that was not expected until tomorrow. I want to also thank Senator Chafee, who really worked diligently during the conference between the House and the Senate on behalf of points that the Senate stood very strongly in support of--things like the maintenance of efforts provision, which there was a lot of concern on both sides of the aisle, and child care funding and the SSI provisions. Those three points could have, I think, caused significant problems had we not held very closely to what the Senate provisions were, and I think we have done that in all three cases. I think Senator Chafee should be commended for his work. I also want to congratulate Senator Domenici for not just his work on the welfare reform bill, but in all the conferences that he had to deal with and his action on the welfare issue when Senator Chafee helped the resolution of the bill move toward the Senate bill. That is probably one of the most important things I wanted to stress about this bill. It may sound like you are lauding yourself here, but in a sense the Senate did a very good job of arguing for its positions in the welfare conference. I think most folks who look at this from the outside will see that, of the two bills that went in, the one bill that came out looks a heck of a lot more like the Senate bill than it does the House bill. I think that is a wise course to take. The Senate bill is a more moderate bill, but it is still a very dramatic reform and one that I think will set this country on a proper course of putting the ladder back down, all the way down, to allow even those at the lower social strata of our country today and income strata of our country today, to climb that ladder up to opportunity and success and change the entire dynamics of welfare from one that is looked upon by those now who are in the system and who pay for the system disparagingly. Welfare is not a word, when it is uttered, that is given any kind of respect. Nobody says the word ``welfare'' and thinks, ``Wow, what a great system.'' Or, ``Gee, this is something that is really necessary, that works.'' That is sad. It is sad for the people who have to pay the taxes to finance it. It is also sad for the people who find themselves caught in it, to be stigmatized by this system that has failed. It may not have failed them particularly. In fact, many people have gotten onto the welfare rolls and come off stronger and better. But those cases happen not as often as we would like to see. We would like to see the changing of the stigma of welfare to a program that, when you look at it, you can be proud of it. When you see your dollars invested in it, you see dollars invested in a system that truly does help people and that is marked with more successes than failures. While there have been successes, they simply do not match up. I think we can look at the overall decline in our poor communities as evidence of that. I want to debunk a couple of myths here to begin with, and then go into the specifics of the legislation, because as I said before, the point I wanted to make here, more than anything else, is if you were someone who voted for H.R. 4 when it passed the Senate, you have to do a pretty good stretch to vote against this conference report. You have to think up a lot of reasons that, frankly, do not exist to vote against this conference report. Because the bills are very similar and, in fact, there were things adopted in the conference report that even moved more toward the Democratic side of the aisle than were in the original Senate-passed bill. That is why I am somewhat at a loss and I am hopeful--I should not say that. I am not hopeful. I would like to think that the President, when he takes a second look at this legislation in its entirety and matches it up with H.R. 4 that passed the Senate, which he said he would sign, that again he would have a big stretch to find some fatal flaw in the conference report that did not exist in the bill that he said he would sign. Let me debunk a couple of myths. No. 1, that we are cutting welfare. We are not cutting welfare. This is the same idea that is being perpetrated on the American public with ``We are cutting Medicare.'' We are not cutting Medicare, Medicare increases over 7 percent a year for 7 years. It is a mantra that comes out. I do not even think about it. It spews forward because we are constantly defending the ``cuts in Medicare.'' We will be charged with cutting welfare, leaving people homeless and not providing support. I refer my colleagues to this chart, which shows that welfare spending from 1996 to the year 2000 will go up under current law at 56 percent, that is 5.8 percent per year. That is almost three times the rate of inflation. Under the Republican bill, this bill that some will label draconian and mean-spirited and not caring about children and all the way--it goes up 34 percent over the next 7 years, or 4 percent a year, almost twice the rate of inflation. So you do not think that the increase is based on an increase in the amount of people going on welfare programs, you will see that the per capita increase in welfare spending--what we are spending on what is estimated to be the welfare population --also goes up over the next several years and continues to go up. That is in spite of the fact that we have a very sharp disagreement between the Congressional Budget Office, whose numbers this is based upon, and the Department of Health and Human Services, as to what the welfare caseload will be over the next several years. These numbers are based on the Congressional Budget Office, which suggests that the welfare caseload will, in fact, remain constant over the next 7 years. Even though with changes in SSI, with other changes in AFDC, with the block-granting, with the work requirements, we have seen a dramatic drop in States that have implemented these kinds of work requirements--Wisconsin and Michigan, for example--in welfare caseload. CBO does not account for that. They say it is going to be constant. The Department of Health and Human Services, by the way, suggests that the welfare caseload over the next 7 years will drop by 50 percent. This is getting ridiculed for one thing but getting scored for the other. You get ridiculed by the White House for cutting welfare rolls by 50 percent over the next 7 years and therefore cutting off children and women and all these things, yet for the purposes of determining how much money you are spending per child the Congressional Budget Office says that welfare caseload is going to remain constant. So you lose on both ends in this situation, which is unfortunate for this debate. But I think it points out that there is certainly room to believe that welfare caseload will go down, and with the programs that we have in place, the block granted programs with finite dollars, that the spending per family will actually increase more than this, that there will be more money for States to do the things that those on the other side, who oppose this bill, want--because there are many who voted for the original Senate bill who say there is not enough money for child care or there is not enough money for work. As I suggested to the Senator from Massachusetts, we are not cutting child care in this bill. We are increasing child care above what is in current law, as we should. We are requiring work, which we have not heretofore. So we are increasing child care almost $2 billion over the next 7 years to compensate for those who will have to work to receive welfare benefits. I will remind Members here that, under the current provisions in this bill, no one will be required to work unless the State opts out of this formula for 2 years. So, most of the child care burden and the participation rate starts out at, I believe, 30 percent and phases up to only 50 percent of the entire caseload. So we are not saying ``everybody this year.'' In fact, under the bill the block grant scheme does not go into effect until October of 1996. That is a change from the Senate bill. As I said, there are certain things in the bill that will be attractive to the other side of the aisle. One of them is that the block grant does not go into effect immediately, as it would have under the Senate bill. It does not go into effect until October 1. So we keep the Federal entitlement for another three quarters of a fiscal year. And it does not go into effect until October 1. So that is a plus, I would think, for some Members on the other side. The child care money that is there, and the work money that is there, we believe is more than sufficient to cover the anticipated caseload given the participation rates, the delay in people having to work, and the delay in the program itself, of 2 years, before anyone even in the program has to work. That is why, with respect to child care, we have backloaded the money. The reason we backload the money is because that is when more people will be required to work and that is when they, the States, will need the money for day care. We think that is a logical way to accomplish it. Some would suggest that we are skimping a little bit in the early years. The Senator from Massachusetts thinks that is wrong. I think that is a very wise allocation of resources on the part of the proponents of this legislation. With respect to the work requirements, we have cut work requirements. One of the things that many Members on the other side of the aisle supported in this bill and were a bit dismayed about with the original Finance Committee bill was that it did not have tough work requirements. We have those same tough work requirements in this bill. We believe with the evidence of other States, Michigan as I said, before, Wisconsin, and others, that caseload does decline when you require work. Many people who would otherwise get on the rolls who know that they have to go to work opt to go to work instead of getting on the rolls. We have seen that happen. We believe there will be more than enough money. Again, we do something that we think is very important. We allow for fungibility. We allow for flexibility of States to move money from one area to another where the States determine where their greatest need is, with the exception of child care because we have seen that is a very crucial item. So we do not allow that money to be used for other purposes. We in a sense have a one-way battle. Money can come in for more child care but no more money than was originally dedicated for child care can go out. Again, it is a concession to the other side of the aisle for their paramount, and I think legitimate, concern for child care. Another thing we did different than the Senate bill, I think many Members on the other side of the aisle would appreciate, is we separate child care out into a separate block grant. In the original Senate bill it was included with the other block grants. There was some concern about the long-term integrity of that fund if it was included. So we have now separated out child care as a separate block grant unto itself which again is something that many Members on the other side of the aisle wanted. As I said before, we put more money in child care. The Senate bill that passed here had $15.8 billion in child care for 5 years. Our bill had $16.3 billion for 5 years--more money in 5 years, and more money for 7 years; $5 billion more; again, almost $2 billion more than current law. Another big thing that the other side of the aisle took sort of a last stand on was the idea of maintenance of effort, maintaining the States' contribution to their welfare program--the fear that some would argue, its legitimacy. But I side with them. I think there is legitimate fear here that States would race to the bottom. They would take the Federal dollars, eliminate the State contribution, and really squeeze their welfare program down to just where the Federal dollar is contributing and no State contribution. What we have said is in the Senate bill that passed that States would maintain 80 percent of their effort for 5 years. The Senator from Louisiana, Senator Breaux, called for an amendment that increased it to 90 percent. The reason he said that is because he was afraid in going to conference with the House, which had a zero maintenance of effort provision--they did not have any maintenance of effort provision--that we had to get to 90 percent simply to go to conference so we can bargain because we probably only would end up with a 45 percent-- halfway, or 50 percent--maintenance of effort. We came out of the conference not with 50 percent, 60 percent, or 70 percent, but a 75- percent maintenance of effort which was the original request of those who were working on the provision here in the Senate in the first place. They only went to 80 because they wanted a negotiated position. It succeeded. They ended up with 75 which is what they wanted in the first place. So maintenance of effort is as Members wanted it in the Senate bill. So, again the two major provisions that caused acrimony in dealing with this bill--child care and maintenance of effort--one was solved in conference to the benefit and even more generous than came out of the benefit, again the Senate bill. The other is exactly where the Senate wanted it in the first place, 75 percent over the term of the bill. So, again I wonder where the problem is or may be found for Members on the big issues because on the big issues, on the real hot buttons, we are in sync with where the Senate was when the bill passed. All the same requirements are there. The 50-percent participation standard by the year 2000, something the other side wanted and we wanted; no family can stay on more than 2 years. Remember, ending welfare as we know it, requiring work after a period of time, and then cutting off benefits after a period of time, something candidate Clinton campaigned on when he ran in 1992 as the new Democrat, is in this bill as passed by the Senate. We allow States to exempt families with children under 1 year of age from working, something that was advocated by the Democrats and kept in in the conference. States that are successful in moving families into work can reduce their own spending. We do allow for flexibility. But the more people you get into work the lower you can reduce your maintenance of effort because you have obviously accomplished the goal of the program, which was to get people working. As far as money is concerned, a lot of concern about growth funds and contingency funds, loan funds--the loan fund is the same as it passed the Senate. The contingency fund is the same as it passed the Senate. And the population growth fund is roughly the same as passed the Senate. The transferability of funds is the same as passed the Senate. And, again with the exemption of the child care block grant which you cannot touch, the same as passed the Senate. The State option on unwed teen parents, the illegitimacy provision, the same as passed the Senate, a very contentious issue, one that was fought here on the Senate floor, one that was demanded by the House. They had to have the illegitimacy provision as the Senator from North Carolina stated, Senator Faircloth. They conceded to the Senate position to allow an option to the States to do that. The one concession that we gave--and it is a minor one--is on the family cap provision which is, once you have gotten onto the welfare role, any additional children you have while on welfare you do not get additional dollars for additional children. Several States have implemented that program. What we have said in this bill is that there is an opt out.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Calendar No. 287, S. 1315, and Calendar No. 288, S. 1388, be indefinitely postponed.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be agreed to and the bill be deemed read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

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

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I send a substitute amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote scheduled for today be postponed to occur at a time to be determined by the two leaders on Friday.