Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

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

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside for later consideration.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Under the Daschle proposal, could you refer that person?

Mr. SANTORUM. Reclaiming my time, it did not, except there are no public-sector jobs other than the jobs we are talking about in which you could be placed. It sort of is giving with one and taking away with the other. The end result, there will not be public-sector jobs the welfare recipients will be referred to. That is a very serious flaw in this amendment that is being put forward by the Democratic leader. I am happy to yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Virginia. [[Page S 12788]]

Mr. SANTORUM. I am happy to yield the remaining 4 minutes on the Republican side to the Senator from Virginia and he can use the remaining time.

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

Mr. SANTORUM. ``Where are the jobs,'' I hear. We are not allowed to refer them to the jobs. Under our bill, we would create the opportunity for those referrals. Under their bill, they prohibit job placements.

Mr. SANTORUM. If I own a company, a small business, and I want to hire a welfare recipient, they cannot refer that person unless it is a newly created job?

Mr. SANTORUM. I want to make sure I am clear on this. In current law, the Senator is suggesting that if there is a job opening which a welfare recipient could qualify to do, and someone wants to hire the welfare recipient in a work program for that position, they cannot refer that person for the job; is that correct?

Mr. SANTORUM. I yield such time as he may consume to the Senator from Colorado.

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

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may use. I thank the Senator from Colorado for his excellent remarks. I thank him for the great work he has done on not only this legislation but really in getting us here. He mentioned that he has been the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is a position I was fortunate enough to serve in for 2 years. I know on that committee he worked to set a lot of groundwork for us to work on welfare reform that we did in the House, which became H.R. 4, that passed, and added tremendously, even in last year's debate, by introducing his own bill last session to reform the welfare system and again move the ball forward on this subject. I want to pick up on this issue of worker displacement because I do not think we got the full answer. I am reading from the bill, section 485 of the bill. Subsection (C) talks about nondisplacement. ``In general, no funds provided under this Act shall be used in a manner that would result in the displacement of any currently employed worker''--I accept that as meaning maybe someone who would be fired-- ``or the impairment of existing contracts for services or collective bargaining agreements.'' Well, what does that mean? It means that if you have any position that is a part of a collective bargaining agreement or contracted service, which just about every city and State position is part of a collective bargaining agreement, you cannot fill that. Any unionized employee whose position is vacant cannot be filled by a welfare recipient. This is a blatant bow to organized labor, saying we will not take that person who holds that sign on the construction project that says ``stop'' and ``slow,'' that is in most cases a contracted service, an existing contract for service; that is a position that is filled by the contractor for the State government and cannot be filled by a welfare recipient; someone who works in the State bureaucracy, who is a member of a union. I imagine you could do this if you became a union member and got off welfare, but if you are in a work program, you cannot fill that job. You cannot be referred for that job under the Daschle-Breaux position. It is a fancier way of saying--I know they were very uncomfortable with coming out and saying we do not want to allow people to be referred, because I got a lot of heat on that, but this is a backdoor way of accomplishing the same thing. So I think we should tell it like it is. It is very clear here that almost all city and State jobs, which are almost all unionized jobs with the exception of political appointments, what we are talking about here is not allowing to replace vacancies. I think that is, as the Senator from Colorado very eloquently stated, one of the biggest impediments to moving people off welfare into jobs in which they can later become productive, is this prohibition. It remains in the Daschle bill. I think it is a serious flaw in the legislation.

Mr. SANTORUM. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. SANTORUM. A city or State job. If you have a job available in the highway department holding a sign up--we have all seen that--and you want to refer a welfare recipient to that job, you cannot do that today; is that right?

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Connecticut. In fact, with respect to the child care comments he made, I think there are some legitimate points he does make. I find myself wondering whether we do need to commit potentially more resources to provide for people who are going to be required to work so they can have the opportunity to have some child care available to them. I am hesitant, in fact reluctant, to be for an entitlement for child care because I think that could be a slippery slope. I am not too sure we want to provide an entitlement to child care for people who are on welfare and have people who are working mothers, who need child care just as badly, have no entitlement. That, I think, creates a double standard that may in fact encourage more people to get on welfare to get the child care benefit. So I do have some concerns about that. But I think it is a legitimate issue to bring to the floor, to talk about how we are going to have single mothers with children work and not have the resources available for child care. I think that is an issue. I think the leader came to the floor before the recess and admitted that that is an area we hope to do some work on. We talk about bipartisanship. I think that may be an area where we could find some common ground. I think, again, on this side, we are going to be stopping short of an entitlement in nature, but certainly to provide more day care slots and to provide more funding for people to have choices as to where to take day care, that is not beyond the pale--at least from this Senator's perspective, that is not. One of the things that concerned me, however, about his talk was at least the inference, if not the direct assault, that somehow or another Republicans are slashing welfare. I think we have to [[Page S 12767]] make this very clear. What we are talking about here, on the Democratic bill and frankly on the Republican bill, is not slashing welfare. I will give the numbers. Unfortunately, the numbers do not match, necessarily, because the Democrats' calculation of what welfare is and the Republicans' calculation is a little different. Welfare, from my perspective, is obviously not just AFDC, but it is AFDC and food stamps and child care and a whole lot of other programs. When you add all those programs up, we come up with spending this year of roughly $170 billion that we will spend on welfare programs. On the Democratic side, they add in the earned-income tax credit and some other social service programs, and they come up with a figure closer to $190 billion. So we start at a different base. But let me give what, under the Republican bill, we will spend 7 years from now and what we would spend 7 years from now if we did nothing. If we did nothing, we would go from spending $170 billion on welfare today to, in 7 years, spending $302 billion on welfare. That is if we did nothing. We would increase spending by $132 billion, a roughly 77 percent increase in spending on welfare in the next 7 years. That is if we did nothing. Now, what does this dramatic slashing, punishing, cruel, blaming-the- poor, Republican proposal do to welfare expenditures over the next 7 years? We are not going to spend in the year 2002 $302 billion, that is correct. We will spend $289 billion. The increase will be, not 77 percent over the next 7 years, but 70 percent over the next 7 years. I know you can say a lot of things about this program, but cruel slashing, cutting, when you are cutting 7 percent of the increase out of a program that is going to increase 77 percent over 7 years is hardly slashing. It is hardly leaving people out on the street. Let us please stick to the facts. This is not a harsh bill. This is not a cruel bill. This is not a bill that blames anybody. This is an honest attempt to try to solve the problem. And, yes, at the same time try to accomplish some savings--hopefully efficiencies, doing things better, getting more people off the rolls and back into productive society, which will save money in the process. Just so you understand what the other side is going to do, under their numbers welfare spending is $190 billion today and will increase to $333 billion by the year 2002, an increase of $153 billion, a 75- percent increase. So, $189--$190 billion to $333 billion. Again, the Republicans start at $170 billion and we go to $302 billion. But they use different numbers. Under the Democratic proposal, their spending would increase from $190 billion today, not to $333 billion but to $330 billion. So, instead of a 75-percent increase, you get a 74-percent increase. I would not even call that an adjustment. That is not even--that does not even touch the system. The Republican proposal was a modest reduction. This does not even meet the standard of reduction, hardly. And they are trying to put this up as changing welfare as we know it? Reforming the system? Giving not only the recipient a different program but the taxpayer a break in funding this system? It does not stand up. Either way, their system does not stand up to reduce spending significantly and ours certainly cannot be accused of slashing and cutting. Ours is a responsible reduction from a very dramatic increase. A couple of other points I wanted to make about the talk of the Senator from Connecticut. He said, as the Senator from Louisiana discussed yesterday and the Senator from New York discussed yesterday, ``How are you going to pay for these programs? You do not have the resources. We cannot do it. The Governors won't be able to put these work programs in place and there is no way for us to be able to fund this program with the number of children and single mothers on this program.'' I would remind the Senator from Connecticut that the Republican Governors Association strongly supports the Dole package, strongly supports the block grant approach, strongly supports the idea that if you give them just what they had this year in AFDC funding, and a little growth factor for the growth States which we have provided for in this bill, that they will be able to run this program, put people to work, get people and turn the system from a maintenance system, a dependency system to a dynamic system that moves people out of poverty and do it for less money. For less money. I will remind you that these Governors, the Republican Governors who support the Dole package represent 80 percent of the welfare recipients in this country. Eighty percent of the welfare recipients in this country are represented by Republican Governors, and they believe they can do a better job with less money than what the Federal Government is doing today. So ask the people who are going to implement the program how they will do it and they will tell you they can do it. In fact, they want to do it. It is interesting that the Senator from Connecticut mentioned and focused a lot of his introductory remarks on how we have to change this dependency system, and used the word ``dependency'' as it should be, as a pejorative term. It is not a good thing. And then later in his talk he talked about how cruel and horrible it was to cut people off after 5 years with nothing. He said, ``We are going to cut them off and there will not be any benefits.'' First off, that is not true. Children, moms with children, will continue to receive food stamps, will continue to receive Medicaid, will continue to receive housing benefits that they do in any other social service. They will lose their cash assistance. Under the Democrat bill, they lose their cash assistance also. The only difference is they replace the cash assistance with a voucher in almost an equal amount--they have a slight reduction--a voucher for them to be able to go out and do basically what they did with the cash. So in a sense it is not much of a penalty. But we say if you are going to end dependency, you cannot continue to keep people on the system and pay them virtually the same they are making now on the system. You have to end dependency by ending dependency. You cannot continue to provide for someone on the system and expect them to leave the system. I do not say that without the understanding that a lot of people leave the system. But a lot of people are trapped in the system because of the nature of the dependency of it in which the benefits continue. So you cannot stand on the floor and say, ``We have to end dependency'' and say, ``We cannot cut them off.'' You cannot be for any dependency and not be for some termination of benefits at some point in time when the social contract between the Government and the person the Government is attempting to help at some point ends, and the person has to do it on their own. The other point that I cannot more strongly disagree with is the Senator from Connecticut repeatedly said, ``This is a national problem.'' It is a national problem. As a Senator from Connecticut, he cares about the children in Philadelphia and he cares about the children in Colorado. The Presiding Officer is from Colorado. I care about the children from Connecticut and the children from Arizona. I just do not believe that the Federal Government is the best person to help them. Sure, it is a national problem. But I think what we have found in decades of looking at what helps the poor in this country is the National Government does not solve the problem. It is a national problem that calls for a local solution. Sure, the Federal Government has a role to play. We are going to continue. He says we are going to wash our hands of it. We are not going to wash our hands of this. I will repeat the numbers to make sure the Senator from Connecticut understands. We are going to be spending $289 billion under the Republican proposal in the year 2002, a 70-percent increase. The commitment is there. But what we are suggesting in this bill, which is philosophically different and fundamentally different from what the Senator from Connecticut and many on the other side of the aisle believe, is that we solve problems best when it deals with the poor by making it more personal and individual and local in nature; that community organizations and individuals solve problems better in dealing with people who have troubles in their lives than a system that processes checks and papers and maintains people in poverty. [[Page S 12768]] I think everyone here understands that this is a national problem, and that that is why we are having this debate. If this was not a national problem, we would not be here debating it. Of course, it is a national problem. But does that mean that the Federal Government has to solve the problem here, has to have instant solutions here for everybody to be treated the same in America? Of course not. National problems do not always require national solutions. They at many times require solutions to be done and ideas to be grown in the local communities or the individual who can help that person get out of poverty. The Senator from Connecticut also talked about how two-thirds of the people on welfare are children. That is a fact. It is very disquieting. He talks about how cruel it is, that the Republican bill will in fact hurt children and target children for their harsh treatment. I will just remind the Senator that over the past 30 years we have tried a great experiment as a result of the Great Society programs of the 1960's. We tried this experiment blindly, with absolutely no idea of whether this program was going to work. A lot of the criticism on the other side is we do not know whether turning this back to the States is going to work. We do not know it is going to work. Well, I would suggest to you back in 1965, 1966, or 1967, in the years in which these programs were enacted in the early 1970's, that a lot these programs were passed, and they had absolutely no idea whether they were going to work. But they thought that it was worth a try. In fact, I would say that a lot of the people who voted for these programs did so with the best of intentions and with the greatest of hopes that this in fact would work. But it has not. I think we did answer that question. Two-thirds of the people on welfare are children. But more of those children are born out of wedlock today than they were in 1965. In fact, if you go back to 1960, the out-of-wedlock birth rate in this country, the illegitimacy rate in this country, was 5 percent. It is now 33 percent. I think everyone will admit now, both sides of the aisle, both philosophical perspectives will tell you that it is a harmful thing for our country. More of them are born out of wedlock. More of them are born at low birth weights. More are born drug addicted, crack addicted. More of them live in unsafe neighborhoods and die violent deaths. More of them have less opportunity. More of them have less educational opportunities and a chance for success. That is the system we have today. I sometimes just become amazed that someone could stand up on the floor and say that what we are doing is cruel when the system today is as cruel as we have ever seen in the history of this country. What we are suggesting is not cruel or harsh. What we are trying to do is change a system that is surrounded or built on the difficulty of maintaining people in poverty. I cannot stress this point enough: No one who receives welfare benefits as their sole source of income gets rich. You do not get rich on welfare. You maintain people. That is what the system does. That is what it is built to do--to maintain people at a level of survival. It is not a system that you go into with the expectation--people who have never been in the business when they think of welfare do not think there is a system that people go into and they are transformed into productive, working citizens. That is what welfare does in this country. Nobody believes that. Nobody thinks of welfare as the system that changes people's lives for the better. They think of welfare as the safety net where people get caught in it. We have to change that. That is what this bill does. It fundamentally changes the whole perception of what welfare is all about. The whole expectation of someone who now gets onto welfare is not how many are going to be provided for whatever the length of time in poverty. But how will I be helped to get back on my feet to get out of poverty. That we will change the system from one of maintenance and dependency to dynamic renewal, that is the challenge. And what many of us believe is that that is the challenge best met by people who care most about the people involved in the system. And, yes, the Senator from Connecticut cares about the children in Philadelphia. He probably cares about my children. I will never forget the Senator from Texas, Senator Gramm, who suggested that on a talk show a couple of years ago. Ira Magaziner was on talking about health care, and Magaziner was saying, ``I care about your children as much as you do, Senator.'' And Senator Gramm shot back, ``Then tell me their names.'' Yes, I care about children in Philadelphia and Hartford and Bismarck and Fargo. I care about them. But that does not mean I am the best person to help them. The people in Fargo know better how to solve this problem and how to deal with this person, to sit across the table from them and say: What can I do to help you get back on your feet and going? Not with the eyeshade down, hand out the check and process the next number. That is the fundamental difference we are debating here today. It is a difference between holding on to the past and moving to the future. It is a great opportunity, it is a great opportunity we have before us to make this system something that we can be proud of, that we can look and see experimentation across the country. In the Republican bill, we allow nonprofit organizations to get involved and be the welfare agency for that community. I know there are many communities--the Senator from Connecticut mentioned Philadelphia on many occasions. I have been to north Philadelphia and west Philadelphia, and the only thing left, the only thing left in these neighborhoods--there are no jobs left in these neighborhoods, nothing of an institutional setting except the church. Why not let the people who care most about these folks, why not let the churches get involved in providing welfare services. Oh, I know we get real nervous about church and state, but, folks, I want to solve the problem. I want to help people. And I know many pastors--many pastors--who would absolutely be the best people to work in those communities. Sure, they would have oversight, there would be Federal oversight or State oversight, but the people working with the folks in the community would be people who know, people who care about them, people who the folks who end up on welfare trust, know that they care about themselves and their families. This is different. We are not walking away. We are facilitating a different approach. It is one that I know will work, I know will work because it has worked in the past and I think it will work better because the Federal Government will provide a lot of the needed resources that in fact were not there in the past. We stand at a very important moment, as we vote on this substitute later today, whether we are going to continue to try to micromanage and have solutions based out of Washington to run welfare or whether we are going to turn away from that approach that we know does not work and move to something different, exciting, dynamic, that is going to help millions of people leave welfare. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Missouri.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, the amendment that I sent to the desk I hope is going to be a noncontroversial amendment. I believe it is one that should get broad support, hopefully unanimous support, of this body. It is an amendment that is very similar in nature to one that was adopted in the House of Representatives on their bill offered by Representative Blute of Massachusetts having to do with fugitive felons who receive welfare. Yes, that is right. There are people who are fleeing the law, felons in which warrants are out for their arrest, who are hiding from the law on the welfare rolls. You say, ``How does that happen?'' Someone has been convicted of a felony and has escaped or violated parole or has been issued a warrant for their arrest on a felony charge and is eluding the law. While eluding the law, they sign up for welfare to support their eluding the law. You say, ``Well, how can this happen?'' It is very easy to happen, because in most States in this country, if you are on the welfare rolls and the police department wants to find out if you are on the welfare rolls and they have a felony warrant for your arrest, the welfare department cannot tell the police department that you are receiving benefits. Why? Because your rights to privacy are protected. If you are on the welfare rolls, you have a right of privacy. You may be a murderer. In fact, one of the reasons I offered this amendment is just last year in Pittsburgh--I have a July 29, 1994, article about a man who was on the welfare rolls. When they found this guy in Philadelphia, they found him and searched him, obviously, and they found a welfare card with his photo on it, his correct name. He did not even bother to lie about what his name was. He was protected by privacy. You say this must be an odd occurrence. This was a murderer, fleeing the law for years and collecting Government benefits. In Cleveland, they did a sting operation, and they rounded up a lot of felons at this sting operation and searched them, and they found out that a third of the people they caught in the sting operation that had existing warrants were on welfare. I visited the police department in Philadelphia and talked to their fugitive task force. They have a fugitive task force in the police department in Philadelphia. They have some 50,000 outstanding fugitive warrants in the city of Philadelphia. Historically, what the police officers have said is anywhere from 65 to 75 percent of the felons they catch are on welfare of some sort, whether it is food stamps or AFDC, SSI, you name it, they are collecting money while eluding the law. Not having to sign up for legitimate work where they might be caught, they can stay home and run around with their buddies at night and collect welfare. So you support them while the Federal Government and the State and local counties try to track them down. This is absurd. So what we are suggesting is that the welfare offices, when contacted by the police department, must give the police department, if they have a warrant--I am not talking about people just wanting to search who is on the welfare rolls, but if you have a warrant [[Page S 12825]] for someone's arrest, a felony warrant, that you can contact the welfare office and say, ``Has such and such signed up for welfare?'' You can give the name and address. And you will find, at least the police told me, when it comes to receiving welfare benefits, they give the correct address to receive those benefits. They do not lie about what address those benefits go to. So you get the name, the address--we have the name--the address, the Social Security number and a photo because a lot of these folks just have police sketches. You might have what their name is, but you may not have a good photo or it may not be a recent photo. So what we do is give police a tremendous advantage, at least according to the police departments I have talked to and the research I have done, in tracking down fugitive felons. As I said before, I do not think this is a controversial measure. I think this is something that can and should be supported by everyone. There is an additional provision in the bill that deals with another problem on AFDC, and that is the term ``when a child is temporarily absent from the home.'' What happens there? This is a separate issue than the fugitive issue, but it is included in the amendment. We have situations where you have a mother and children or a child who, unfortunately, may be sent to prison or sent to detention, or whatever the case may be, but be out of the home for a period of years. Under the laws in most States, because the Federal law does not define ``temporarily absent,'' what happens is that mom continues to receive welfare benefits for that child, even though the child has not lived in the home for years or months because they are in jail. We think that is sort of a silly idea. If the child is being otherwise detained because of incarceration as a runaway, whatever the case may be, we should not continue to pay the mother the benefits for the child who is no longer living there. That, you would think, is pretty much common sense, but under the Federal law today, that is not common sense. So we define what ``temporarily absent'' is. Again, I am hopeful this amendment will be agreed to and adopted, but I am going to ask at this point for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair. I rise to offer an amendment. Before I do that, I just want to make a couple of comments about what the Senator from Illinois stated and characterized the Republican leadership bill, which I am very hopeful will be adopted by the Senate. She says that the bill balkanizes welfare reform into 50 separate programs and that this is bad, that everyone should be treated the same. I happen to believe that that is the problem with this system, that everybody is treated the same and not particularly well, and the balkanization into 50 separate programs is a bad idea. But balkanization into a million individual efforts to help poor people in our society is a good idea. And that is what this bill does. Sure, it gives a lot of flexibility to the States, but there are many provisions in this bill which tell the States and direct the States and encourage the States to go farther; to go down to the local level and to the community level and make this a program that is a program that talks about communities and neighborhoods helping neighborhoods and friends helping friends. And that is the dynamism that is in this bill that has never been tried from a Federal perspective before. So, yes, it is balkanization but not to 50 but to 50 times 50 times 50 and more. And that is the excitement about this bill. That is why we are so committed to seeing this happen. The Senator from Illinois also said that there is nothing in this bill about job creation, and I have heard this over and over and over again. And I feel like a broken record getting up and responding to it. But I will say several things. The Senator from Illinois said there is nothing about job creation. What she is referring to, I assume the Senator is referring to is that there is no Federal dollars to place people in employment. There is no specific pot of Federal dollars to say we will pay for employment slots and for supervision and for paying their stipend while they are working. What I would say is that the Governors of the States, the Republican Governors of the States, I believe 29 out of 30 of the Governors have said that this bill is an acceptable bill to them; that they do not need a big pot of money if they can run their own program; that they can do it cheaper and better, put more people to work, get more people off the rolls if they have the flexibility to run their own program without all the tripwires and redtape that is involved in the Federal system. That is Governors, as I said before, Republican Governors, who represent 80 percent of the welfare recipients in this country. Republican Governors are from States that represent 80 percent of welfare recipients and they say this is a good deal; they can live with this; they want this. And they can create the jobs to put the people to work as required by this legislation. I would also say that we eliminate, in the Dole bill we eliminate the provision in current law, which was maintained in the Daschle bill, we eliminate the provision that says if you are a city or State or any other kind of municipality, you can no longer fill a vacancy with a welfare recipient. That is current law. You cannot fill a vacancy with a welfare recipient in a courthouse or school or any other municipality or government entity. What we say is, if there is a vacancy there and you want to give someone on welfare a chance, you can fill that vacancy with someone. I used the example earlier today, when we talked about this, of folks on a road crew standing there with that sign: ``Slow,'' ``Stop.'' You cannot fill that vacancy, if it occurs, with a welfare recipient. You can today under the Dole provision. That is creating jobs. You want to talk about creating job slots, that creates a lot of job slots in communities across this country that are illegal today. So we do expand the opportunities for people on welfare to get jobs under this piece of legislation. Mr. President, one other comment. The Senator from Illinois said that children should not suffer because of being born accidentally into poverty. Unfortunately, in this country and every other country in the world, poverty exists. The difference between other countries and this country is that when you are born into poverty, you are not frozen into poverty by the Government which does not allow you to rise in society. There are many cultures and civilizations in this world that doom you to the life in which you were born, but we do not have a caste system in this country. We do not have levels of classes in this country. The greatness of this country is that the grandson of a coal miner who lived in a company town outside of Johnstown, PA, can be a U.S. Senator, as I am. That is the greatness of this country, that we still offer opportunity, and that is what is lacking in the current system. We disincentivize people from getting off the welfare roll by providing, as Franklin Roosevelt said, the subtle narcotic to the masses of welfare. We are going to get rid of the subtle narcotic and turn that into Powerade, into a system to give them the energy and the opportunity to move forward and rise. Amendment No. 2477 to Amendment No. 2280 (Purpose: To eliminate certain welfare benefits with respect to fugitive felons and probation and parole violators, and to facilitate sharing of information with law enforcement officers, and for other purposes)

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I join with the Senator from Oklahoma. Senator Feinstein's second amendment, I think, is a positive amendment and one that maybe we can work on and get it accepted on both sides. I think it is a good amendment. I am not as enthusiastic about the first amendment. In defense of Senator Hutchison, who really did an outstanding job on this side of the aisle in working on the issue of formulas and trying to bring some compromise into a very difficult issue, nobody is happy with allocations of formulas, as the Senator from Oklahoma said. There are States that win; there are States that lose. What we tried to do is hold at least everybody harmless. We did under the formula that is in the Dole bill and then provided some reasonable amount of money for growth. I guess what is really the bugaboo here is how we determine what growth is and what is fair. I suggest to you that if the Senator from Texas [Mrs. Hutchison], were here, what she would say is what is fair should not be based on what is--a system that you receive money from the State based on how much money you put up, not on how many poor people you have but how much money you are willing to give to the poor people in your State. So if you are a State like California, which is a high-benefit State and puts up a lot of money, you get more Federal dollars. It is a match. The more you put up, the more money you get. And so as a result, States like California and, I would say, Pennsylvania where I am from, which is above average--not as high as California but above-average State as far as welfare dollars--get more money from the Federal Government because we are willing to put up more State dollars to match the Federal funds. Now, that is an equitable system the way it exists today, but we are changing the system. Effective as a result of this bill's passage there is no more Federal match. There is no more every dollar we put up or every--I think it is roughly 50-50--every dollar we put up, you put up a dollar and we go on together. What we do now is send a block grant to the States. Every State gets a block grant. What is that? It is an amount of money irrespective of anything else. Irrespective of how much you are contributing, we are going to give you an amount of money that you will be able to spend on AFDC to help mothers with children. It is not dependent anymore on how much money you put up. It is just a block grant. Now, if we were going to design a block grant program from the start, if we did not have the existing AFDC program in place, how would we distribute that money? Well, let me tell you how it is distributed under the bill. It is distributed based on how much money you got last year. Think about this. Now we are giving a block grant to take care of a population of children and in most cases mothers and we are basing it on last year's amount of money that the State got, which, of course, from last year, [[Page S 12811]] was based on how much the State was willing to pony up to get Federal dollars and match it. It has no relation again to how many more persons but to how much the State was willing to spend. So what happens, there are many States that are high-benefit States that are getting a lot more money per child than low-benefit States are getting per child. If we were going to design a program today from start--let us say we did not have an AFDC program, we had no poverty assistance program at the Federal level; we were going to start a program today--how would we design a model for helping children? I suggest that what we would do is exactly what the Senator from California suggested. We should figure out how many poor people there are in the State, people eligible for welfare, for AFDC, and allocate so many dollars per person on welfare. We would take the number of people on welfare in the country, we would say here is how many dollars per person each State will get for that person on welfare and divide it up among the States. That would be a fair allocation formula. No child in California is worth more than a child in Mississippi or Vermont or Oklahoma. But that is not what we did. We did not start out and say everybody is going to get the same irrespective. What we did was say children in California actually get more money because the State in the prior legislation, the current AFDC law contributed more so children in California get $200 per month per child and a person in Mississippi may get $50. Now, what the Senator from California says is that, well, we are subsidizing these bad States like Mississippi that did not contribute a lot of money to help the people in their State. I hear a lot from the other side of the aisle about we should not be punishing children--except, of course, if they happen to live in a State that is not a high-benefit State in this example because that is exactly what we do with the Feinstein amendment. We punish children who live in low-benefit States that continue to get low benefits under the current program. What Senator Hutchison did was say, look, let us look at, since we now no longer require in this bill any kind of matching State funds-- there is no maintenance-of-effort provision in this bill. California can completely pull the plug on every dollar of welfare spending that they are now required to spend to get the Federal match. They do not have to contribute a cent anymore and they get all the money. And they get two or three times as much per child as Mississippi. But now, again, California does not have to spend the money to get that money. Now, how is it fair to say that California should get, because they are increasing in population, even more money per child than Mississippi which maybe is not growing as fast? If you look at it from the perspective of not what has been but what a fair allocation formula should be now based on a completely new model, you would suggest that States having low-benefit levels that are growing should be the recipients of the increasing growth funds to have their children come up to parity with States like California and Pennsylvania and New York and others. That is what the Senator from Texas is suggesting. I would also suggest the Senator from California is doing her duty. She represents a mega-State, a State that has been very generous with welfare dollars, and under her allocation formula of the pot, I think California--I think it is about $1.5 billion, money that would be allocated over the next 7 years for these programs. They get roughly half the money in California under this program. It is a big chunk. California is a big State. It has one-eighth of the population of the country but they get about half the increase under this formula allocation. If I was from California, I would design a program that got me half the money, too. I understand that. But it is not fair when you consider the new rules that we have put in place. No longer do we require match. That is the key here. California does not have to put up a penny to get this money anymore. What we are saying is because we do not make them put up a penny anymore and because they are getting much more per child than I think any other State, with the possible exception of New York, we are not going to give them even more money because they happen to be growing. We are going to take care of the States that do not get a lot of money and that are growing also. So that is the basis for this discussion. And so while it may, to the virgin ear on this subject, be a very appealing argument from the Senator from California that this is only fair, I mean we are growing and therefore we deserve more money, I would suggest that if we are looking at it for the sake of the child and not looking at where that child lives but looking at what the Federal Government's obligation is to a child under a new system where State matching dollars are irrelevant, then I would suggest that growth fund should be targeted to those States where the Federal contribution per child is the lowest. And that is what this amendment does. I speak against my own interest in this case because Pennsylvania is not as high a benefit State as California but it is an above-average benefit State that is not going to receive any growth dollars according to the estimates. We are not going to receive a penny, and we would receive a small amount of increase under the Feinstein bill. So it would be in my interest for Pennsylvania to vote for, I think it is $6 million. It is not a whole lot of money for Pennsylvania, but it is a little bit of money under the Feinstein amendment. That might be my benefit, but I do not think it is fair under the new allocation. I think it is fair to focus on the child, not where that child lives, in what State. As the Senator from Connecticut said earlier in the day, this is a Federal problem and we should have a Federal solution. I did not agree with the second part. It is a Federal problem. We do not need Federal solutions, we need local solutions. But the dollars that come from Washington should be equitable across the country. That is what this growth formula attempts to do, to bring other States with lower benefits up to meet the average. I know it is going to be a difficult vote. I happen to be from one of those States that does not benefit under the current growth funds but would under the Feinstein growth fund. You would be very tempted, and I know many Members will be, to jump on for your parochial interests. No. 1, I think it would be very damaging for the long-term interests of this bill. I think it is absolutely unfair when you look at the child, not where the child lives and how much the Federal Government is paying per child. I think that should be the fundamental test of whether this formula is fair. I know this is going to be a very heated issue. It is one that is going to be talked about tomorrow, and I know the Senator from Texas will be far more eloquent than I have been in defending her formula. I just want to commend the Senator from Texas, Senator Hutchison, one more time, for the tremendous work she did in putting together an allocation formula which no one thought could be done. We did not think we would be able to work this one out. This was the issue that was bogging us down. When it comes to money, everybody gets real tightfisted around here. We were able to work out something which I think is defensible, not only from a political standpoint of folks being able to explain back home, but I think it is very defensible from a fairness perspective of what this bill actually accomplishes. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. So, again--and my analysis here may be a little dated because I know you have revised your bill and I may not have the current analysis. That is why I am trying to understand. So those who are required to work, in 1996, at least according to our 30 percent of the State caseload, would have to be working in 1996? (Mr. THOMAS assumed the chair.)

Mr. SANTORUM. My understanding is you have participation rates. We have participation rates in our bill and you have participation rates in your bill.

Mr. SANTORUM. I guess then my question is, let us say you have someone who is a single mom with a couple of children, and she is on the program for 2 years and has been in job search and doing things that are required under the temporary employment assistance part. She hits her 2-year limit and then is required, to continue on with those benefits, to work. Now, my understanding from the participation requirements is that 30 percent of your caseload would be in that situation, is that correct, in the year 1996? So you are talking about 30 percent would be in this transition program, temporary program, and then would eventually get into the block granted work program? Is that your understanding?

Mr. SANTORUM. Now, my understanding is also that one of the limitations on this workfare program is that after 2 years, you then go into the Work First employment block grant program, which requires you to perform--is it 20 hours, is that correct, 20 hours of some sort of work?