Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I yield to the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. SANTORUM. Does that apply just to those exemptions or the high unemployment exemption also, so if the State of New York, for example, did not want the people to go to work in New York City? Or is that an automatic? Is there no State flexibility there?

Mr. SANTORUM. Even if they are in a high unemployment area--I am going through the other exceptions here--even if their children are living with other than a parent; even if you have a child who is ill or incapacitated, irrespective of all of these exemptions, after 2 years, you have to go into some sort of community work program?

Mr. SANTORUM. Would that be part of what we would consider your--I guess it is called the Work First employment block grant? Would that be under the Work First employment block grant, after the 2-year transition in that program? I am just trying to understand.

Mr. SANTORUM. I see that as a problem.

Mr. SANTORUM. That is under the revised legislation. I know even at 8 percent, because I have seen figures, most major communities, at least in 1994, would not have met that criteria, and would have been over the 8 percent. So no recipient in that city, for the period of 1994, anyway--and my staff is now looking to see how far back that goes--no person who lived in the city of New York, for example, would have had any of that time they spent on welfare count toward that 5-year limit. I know there are many cities that have had unemployment rates of over 8 percent far back for many years, and none of the people would be considered as time limited. Many of them would----

Mr. SANTORUM. OK.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I want to add my kudos to the Senator from Louisiana for his comments. I share his sentiment that welfare reform needs to be bipartisan in nature. And we have had discussions off the floor that both sides have moved from the initial introductions of legislation, even here in the Senate, and have moved more together. I think the Dole bill, as introduced, comes more toward a common ground. And I hope--in fact, I am optimistic--that with some refinements, we can get bipartisan support for the Dole package. I admit that the Democratic leader's package has moved significantly from past welfare reform efforts that we have seen here on the Senate floor from the other side of the aisle. That is a constructive move in the direction of real reform. I have a few questions, if the Senator from Louisiana will just take a few questions, about the bill that is on the floor. I know he was very involved in drafting it. I guess it is more of a concern that I have where I sort of see that the bill falls a little short, and where we might be able to move again in a more constructive way forward. Let me start out with three basic areas. One is the exemptions to the new Temporary Employment Assistance Program. The Temporary Employment Assistance Program is a new program replacing the old AFDC program, which is the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Program, which generally is conceived as welfare, the cash grant to a mother, in most cases, single moms with children. That program is eliminated under the Democratic leader's bill and replaced with what is called the Temporary Employment Assistance Program. But in the bill, there is provided a whole laundry list of exemptions to the time limit on that program. I guess I have a problem that the exemptions are so broad that it looks, to me, that there are very few people who would actually be limited in time, under this program, to the 5 years. And let me just read through some of the major exemptions. No. 1 is an exemption for high unemployed areas. High unemployed areas in the bill is defined as an area that has an unemployment rate of 7.5 percent or higher. I believe just about----

Mr. SANTORUM. What I think is important in this whole debate is an understanding that the work requirement provision in the bill is not a penalty, it is an opportunity. It is an opportunity for people who have not had the chance to go out to find work, in many cases to be placed in a work program so they can go out and be productive and learn skills and, in many cases, because you have people who have never had jobs before, they can learn what it is to get up in the morning and get their children ready for day care, or for someone else to come into the house, and get yourself to a work site, work an 8-hour day, and get home and again provide for their children. That is an experience that, unfortunately, many people in our society have not experienced. That is a very valuable one. I add that it is something many people in our society have never seen a parent do. They have no idea what it means to grow up in a house where they never saw that happen. So it is important that we provide to everyone the opportunity to work and that we require it, in a sense, and that we say that this is a temporary program; this is not a program that is going to go on and on. Welfare is not a maintenance system where we provide for people in poverty for indefinite periods of time, but it is a dynamic transitional program that prepares people to get from a position where they cannot work, or they are not prepared to work, to a position where they will and do work. That is lost if you provide what I call ``impoverishment zones,'' not ``empowerment zones,'' where you basically tell a group of people that because you are in a big city that has high unemployment, we have no expectation that you will ever be able to find work, and therefore you can stay on welfare. But the rest, everybody else, we will change the system for you. But you in Detroit and you in the City of New York, you cannot make it, and we do not believe you can, so we are going to sort of write you off. I do not want to write anybody off. I think everybody should have the same level of expectations. As I cited before the Senator from Minnesota came to the floor, the Riverside, CA, example, where during the period of time of the GAIN program they experienced a 14 percent drop in food stamps, a 16 percent drop in caseload, and a 20 percent drop in AFDC, and they had in excess of 9 percent unemployment. People were getting off the rolls, getting to work, doing the things that many on both sides of the aisle said is a successful program. So I believe it must happen. I think to write off particular areas of the country because of difficulties in unemployment is an unwise move.

Mr. SANTORUM. Yes.

Mr. SANTORUM. There have been many experiments done under waivers under the Family Support Act.

Mr. SANTORUM. If I can, I say to the distinguished Senator from New York that there are isolated instances where the current law is working and, I think, from social science evaluations, modestly working. We have come in welfare to expect that modest improvement is as good as we will ever get. Maybe that is the case. I am not satisfied with that as a benchmark for the ceiling. I think what we need to do is, as I said, to stretch the envelope. While the Family Support Act of 1988 did create a window of opportunity for certain areas to get waivers and to try new things and to engage in work and other kinds of things, which we believe on this side and I know many on the other side believe is the way to go, we believe it needs to be more dramatic, that we need to do more and try new things. That is what this Dole-Packwood bill does, I think, and does it in a very dramatic way. The final point I want to make is on the cost side. I know the Senator from Minnesota is here. I say to my colleagues on the Republican side, it is getting rather lonely over here. There are plenty of opportunities to speak on this issue. I hope that those who have comments will come to the floor and make their comments and debate this very important issue. There are no speakers on this side at this point. I say to those listening, if you have statements you would like to make, this is a good time to come down and make those. I say, with respect to the cost estimates on this program, what we see is really a cost-neutral program on the part of the Democratic leader's bill when it comes to welfare spending. The bill saves, over 7 years, roughly $20 billion. But $19 billion of the $20 billion in savings is in food stamps. So what we see is what most on that side would consider welfare and SSI and AFDC and child care. A lot of those--in fact, most of those go up in spending. What we see is most of the savings really being gathered out of the Food Stamp Program. I say those, over a 7-year period, are rather modest compared to what the Republicans suggest. I think we had about 50 percent more in savings under the Food Stamp Program. So it does not meet with what I think most would see as what is necessary to get Government spending under control. I say that even under the Republican bill, spending goes up dramatically in virtually all these programs. I know the block granted AFDC Program does not go up and the child care program does not. But the rest of the programs--the SSI, Food Stamp Program, everything else--goes up at very dramatic rates. In fact, we are talking about a very minimal reduction in the spending on welfare in this country. If this was being judged solely based on how much money we are saving on welfare, I think both proposals in the eyes of the American public would be considered a failure. This is not a big cut in welfare spending. We are just barely curving the rate of increase in welfare. I think given the dramatic nature of these proposals, that may be the best we should do. As I had the discussion with the Senator from New York, transitioning people, making the program a dynamic system is expensive. We are turning a system where you basically have someone behind a computer cranking out checks to people who come and show up and verify certain things, and they get a check or stamp and leave. That is not a lot of time consumed by that person, not a lot of effort involved. When you are taking that system from a maintenance processing system and turning it into a system where you actually sit across the table from someone and try to figure out what their problems are and how you can help them and what we need to do to change their lives, that takes energy, it takes time, it takes resources. To suggest that we can change welfare at the time that we can slash it or cut it dramatically, I think would be unwise. We have not done that on this side. In fact, I have not heard a lot of comments on the other side about how we are slashing welfare. The reason is because we are not. Welfare is going to grow fairly dramatically over the next 7 years. It will be different. It will be different than anything we have ever seen. I think it is worth a try. We may come to the point in time where we look at what has happened with this bill, if it is successful, and I believe it will be, and all the attempts will be made and all the different projects will be tried by the different States, you might find out we get modest gains at best, or we get no gains. [[Page S 12703]] We may have to step back and say, is it worth it? You have some writers in this town who are suggesting that we should just give up. That it is not worth trying any more. It is not worth spending the money. We may be there. I think it is worth a try of a different way, and what we have suggested here in this bill is a dramatically different way of dealing with this problem. It is truly ending welfare as we know it. Welfare will no longer be the image of someone showing up and receiving a check, but almost go back to the image of the Depression when we had the WPA--can the Senator help me?

Mr. SANTORUM. And programs where you saw it more as a dynamic program where people were there to do things, to make a positive contribution to their community. I am hopeful that is what will result in this. I am very optimistic that we can find, I think, very solid support from the Republican side and a significant number of Democrats to pass this Dole bill or something very similar to it and do it while being very kind, I think compassionate, in the truest sense of the word, compassionate with the people who find themselves involved in this system, and at the same time respectful of the people who work hard and pay taxes to fund the system. I yield the floor. Privilege of the Floor

Mr. SANTORUM. No, no. In the Democratic leader's bill, what they have done with their most recent modification is eliminate the boundaries for determining who would be eligible for the exemption from the 5-year limitation. And so----

Mr. SANTORUM. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, what we talked about was the 8 percent figure as any area of what I thought was a Bureau of Labor Statistics area, which is a geographical area defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as an area they will then determine the number of people, the percentage of people in that area that are unemployed. If those areas are above 8 percent, in the Democratic leader's bill, those people who reside in those areas that have an unemployment rate of over 8 percent, that time in which they live in those areas of high unemployment does not count toward their 5-year limit. In fact, it can be indefinite. What I found out was that, yes, it was 7.5, they raised it to 8, but they eliminated the requirement that they had to be a defined Bureau of Labor Statistics area, that the State could now define what the area would be. It could be an entire State. It could be a portion of the Bureau of Labor Statistics area. It could be a neighborhood. What it does is it makes this determination completely arbitrary on the part of the State, potentially even indecipherable, because you could have literally neighborhoods picked out or communities picked out. I think it is poor policy, but I think it creates a huge loophole in this whole area of exemptions from the time limit on welfare, not a step in the right direction. They gave with one hand and took away with the other. They gave by increasing the unemployment rate from 7.5 to 8 percent, and then they said we will define where the area is, we will not use the current Bureau of Labor Statistics area, we will let the States determine what they mean. That really does take away any real change in that policy.

Mr. SANTORUM. I yield the floor. Privilege of the Floor

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank my friend, the Senator from Connecticut, for his thoughtful comments and for his kind remarks about me. I look forward to working with him and others in, again, trying to craft what I believe will be a bipartisan solution to this problem. We may not get the resounding vote that we got in 1988 in this Senate on this measure, but I think the measure that passes in the Senate this year will be quite significantly more dramatic than what we did in 1988. When you stretch the envelope, you leave more people behind. There is, in a sense, less consensus. I think it would be easy to craft something that is watered down that could get everybody's vote here, but I do not think we would accomplish what we set out to accomplish, which is truly reforming the welfare system. I am hopeful we can stretch the envelope, be bipartisan and really help millions of Americans get out of poverty. I rise to just finish up on some of the comments and discussion I was having with the Senator from Louisiana. He asked, really, the question that is asked probably most about the Republican proposal, which is how are States going to be able to put people to work and run these work programs and, at the same time, do that, which is very [[Page S 12701]] expensive, with a flat amount of funding, given that some States are going to see increases in poverty population? I mentioned the fact those States that do experience increases, we do have a pot of money there that would help them. What about just dealing with the increased cost of providing for a work program? I cite an example of Riverside, CA. The Senator from New York, on many occasions, has cited Riverside, CA, as an example of an existing program that seems to be having some good results in a work- related program, the GAIN program, and other Members on the floor have done the same thing. I just state for the Record that in Riverside, and I will add Grand Rapids and Atlanta, those three programs combined, which have gone into a program that is a work program that requires a substantial investment of time and energy on the part of the welfare recipient, is this dynamic program that I believe the States would go to under the Republican proposal. In those areas, what we have seen is a dramatic cost savings. So, assuming that this could be replicated on a State level, we are seeing flat funding, yes, but in these three communities that put this program in place, this work requirement and other kinds of dynamic turnover off the welfare roles back into productive society, there was a 22 percent reduction in AFDC--22 percent reduction in AFDC. Not flat, not an increase. They saved 22 percent in costs. Their caseload went down 16 percent overall. Food stamps went down 14 percent. So to suggest that we have to pump in more dollars to accomplish this purpose of putting people to work I do not think meets with the numbers. And, by the way, Riverside, CA, had a 9 percent unemployment rate at the time. So we have the exemption for anything over 8 percent that you do not have to go to work, you do not have to go to work in the temporary assistance program. You can do it. I can tell you, I come from southwestern Pennsylvania. We have had some very tough economic times and continue to have them. I can tell you there are lots of people who say, ``Look, there are jobs out there, you just have to go out and find them and be willing to work and go do it. It proves the case that, No. 1, there are jobs out there and you can save money in the process and run a better program that is being lauded by both sides of the aisle. So the numbers of what we have seen of what has been successful in this country prove that you can run a program with less money, get people off welfare into work even in high unemployment areas. I think what we have seen is you have these programs that really do focus on the individual, and they provide what the individual needs. That is not a check the first of the month and, ``Thank you, ma'am,'' and out the door, but it is care and concern and cooperation and an intensive desire by the people in the system to see that person who walks through that door who has had a tough run of luck in a problem situation get that kind of assistance they need to turn themselves around. I have another comment I want to make about the discussion I had with the Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. I have small children.

Mr. SANTORUM. Obviously, they can redesign the entire program. They can redesign eligibility criteria. They can do a whole host of things that put requirements in that we do not have now. For example, you mentioned the work requirement. Several States have put in an immediate work requirement. I think it is Wisconsin that did, and we saw the number of people on welfare drop, by some enormous number like 20 or 30 percent, like that because people did not want to sign up and work. I think we will see, and I think Governors believe if you make welfare into a system that is a dynamic system where people are going to have their lives changed, turned around, back out, it is sort of--I think of the Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy got to the Wizard of Oz, before they saw the wizard, they went in and the scarecrow got stuffed full of hay and the tin man got all shined up. If you see this as this program where you come in and try to change peoples lives as a dynamic process, in a shorter scope as opposed to one that is more of a long-term maintenance kind of system, you will see people opting out in some cases, so we have lower caseloads. We have seen that happen in States that put those kind of requirements in place, and we will see people on for less periods of time, because if the system works well--I remember debating this in the House--if the system works well, people will not end up in the welfare system, because if it works well, we will get them ready for jobs and get them back into job placements. That, to me, is what we have to sort of change--the entire psychology of what is going on here. I think what we have done is give States the flexibility to do that in a way that we have seen in other experiments works very, very effectively.

Mr. SANTORUM. Yes.

Mr. SANTORUM. And more, because the benefits are more generous. I suspect we will see more people moving from the AFDC rolls, in an attempt to claim some sort of disability to get into the SSI. I suggest that given the fact that this program is not rapidly increasing in many States--maybe New York and Pennsylvania being two of them--we will see a leveling off and maybe even a decline where we have in those States an opportunity to get work into these programs and get significant cost savings. And we have provided in this bill a growth factor of $1.5 billion, I think, over the next 7 years for the higher growth States to tap into more money to be able to deal with the increases in AFDC population. So we have not completely turned our backs to the possibility of growth. We hope that with the combination of the Governors being able to redesign programs with some limited additional assistance from the Federal Government, we can handle those States that are having growth problems in AFDC.

Mr. SANTORUM

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