Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Madam President. I will join my colleague from Pennsylvania in congratulating the chairman of the committee and the ranking member for their outstanding work on this bill. And I know how difficult it is. The chairman of the committee is often in our meetings talking about how the discretionary funds continue to get cut, and to try to reallocate those resources is a brutal task and one that is a thankless job, and you have to make tough decisions and you are not going to make a lot of people happy in that case. And I also say no one fights to make sure that discretionary spending gets a fair allocation out of the budget process more than the Senator from Oregon. I rise to join my colleague from Pennsylvania in what I agree with him is a modest amendment. If you look at what has happened over the last many years to mass transit funding in past Congresses, mass transit funding has suffered a disproportionate share in the cuts of the transportation budget for quite some time and continues in this round to suffer again a disproportionate share of the funding cuts. I understand we have priorities, and this was an attempt by the committee to try to order those priorities. What we are trying to do with this amendment is to try to in some way give back or create a higher priority for mass transit. I think the reason I am so enthusiastic in supporting this is because I strongly believe in mass transit and its role, not as just providing transportation to seniors who want to get to the store, which is obviously important, but the majority of riders on mass transit systems in this country use it to get to work. When you look at what is happening with the reductions in Federal funding and the increase in fares and what that means to particularly low-income families who rely on mass transit to get to work. When I served in the Congress, I represented an area called the Mon Valley, an old steel valley outside Pittsburgh. There are communities there that are now almost ghost towns, unfortunately. But these communities had incredibly high unemployment rates, virtually no jobs. Most all of the mills that were in these towns have closed down years ago. And the only way they could get to work, because most of them could not afford a car, was to get on the port authority bus, PAT bus in Pittsburgh, and go into town or some other job center. Well, because of cutbacks and the like, they had to discontinue services to a lot of these communities. So these people had absolutely no way to get to work. They could not afford a car. Unfortunately, in those areas crime was very high. Insurance rates were very high. Even if you could afford a car, in many cases you did not keep a car very long. So it was a difficult task, and I became very sensitized to the importance of mass transit as a link to a lot of urban areas; in small towns, for that matter, the link for the people who live in these poor communities where the jobs do not exist anymore. There are no jobs in North Philadelphia. They do not have many. If you want to get to work, you have got to somehow get into center city or out up into northeast or out in the suburbs. Those are the realities of living in urban areas today. And mass transit provides that very vital link. I find it ironic we are discussing this the day after we were talking about welfare reform. I have been on the floor here the last couple days talking about welfare reform. And I was in Philadelphia a couple months ago. We talked with a group of welfare recipients as well as advocates. And one of the things that they highlighted most to me was the need to continue mass transit funding. The response was, ``Why so?'' And it came back with, ``Well, if you are expecting these people to go to work, they have to have some way to get to work.'' Obviously, most welfare recipients do not own cars. They do not have the resources to get a car. Many of them do not have friends who have cars or relatives, and they have to use mass transit. As we continue to cut back or increase fares, which is going to be the result of the action here, we are going to affect the ability for these people to hold jobs, and in fact if we are going to make them have jobs on welfare, to get those jobs and collect those benefits. So, that is why I rise in very strong support of this, I think, very minor reallocation of resources to recognize the importance of mass transportation for so many Americans who are trying to do what we want them to do, which is get to work, hold a job, and be responsible citizens, tax-paying citizens of our country. I wanted to mention one place in particular just so you do not think this is a problem of the big cities. This bill is, in fact, kinder to populations of under 200,000 people. So the big cities get a little bigger hit in this bill than the smaller areas. Maybe that should be the case, because a lot of the smaller areas are more dependent upon the Federal subsidy because they do not have the base of support that a lot of the larger urban areas have. But I wanted to pick up on what my colleague from Pennsylvania talked about. He talked about Indiana, PA. Indiana, PA, is famous--probably not famous to many people, a lot of people here--but it is famous because it is the birthplace of Jimmy Stewart. In fact, the Jimmy Stewart Airport--they just had a big commemoration of naming the airport after Jimmy Stewart. They opened up a museum there. Indiana, PA, is a town in western Pennsylvania that has just a tremendously tough time. Indiana County has the highest unemployment rate in the State. It is over 20 percent. With these cuts, as was reported by my colleague from Pennsylvania, it would go from $1 to $1.80; either that or have a 25 percent reduction in service. That is going to be a big hardship on this community. So what we are trying to do is just ease the pain a little bit by adding some money to this account. I hope that we can get the support of our colleagues and stand up in conference and look at the House numbers and try to do a little bit more in recognition of the importance of mass transit for the employment of so many people in our urban settings who need to get to work. I want to congratulate my colleague from Pennsylvania for his amendment and his willingness to stand up and fight for what I believe is a very just cause. I am pleased to sponsor him and support him in his effort. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I appreciate that. That is a common voice that I hear from the other side every time I have this chart up. So I appreciate the Senator being added to the chorus of people who do not like my chart. But I am glad people are paying attention. Maybe the White House will pay attention and actually come forward with a budget. It is easy for me. I do not have to come here and do this. I can actually put this chart away, file it away for another day. All the President has to do is put a budget forward. I would say to the Senator from California, who hopefully is listening in the Cloakroom, on a couple of occasions I came to the floor and noted example after example how Members on her side of the aisle refer to the President of the United States by his first name, terms like, ``Where is George?'' ``Bushwhack,'' ``Reaganomics.'' I can go on down the list. So to be indignant in this case is just further evidence of the fact that maybe people are uncomfortable with the fact that the President has not put forward his budget, and since you cannot argue the substance, let us argue the chart. Getting back to the Democratic bill on this subject of welfare reform, they say they impose a 5-year limit, but in fact they do not because there are in this bill--here is the substitute, and we have pages 8 through 11, four pages of exceptions, of people who do not have to live by the 5-year time limit. So there are a whole host of exceptions to people who are limited to 5 years, and I will go through some of them. There is a hardship exception. That is the first one on here. A hardship exception is people who are on AFDC, or now this new program, who live in high unemployment areas. So if you are on unemployment--high in this case is defined as 7\1/2\ percent--if you are in a high unemployment area, 7\1/ 2\ percent or higher, you do not have to worry about the time limit. Just to give you an idea, in 1994, people who lived in these cities would not have 5-year time limits: Los Angeles, Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Miami, Detroit, and the list goes on. None of those people would have time limits. I do not know what percentage of the people on AFDC are in those cities, but I would suggest a pretty good percentage of them are. All of them are now off the list. They do not count toward the State's participation rate. So you have large groups of folks who will never be time limited, particularly in the major cities of this country. One huge loophole. And there are a lot of suburban areas and rural areas that also qualify with these high unemployment areas. I know that in several counties, rural counties in Pennsylvania that have had difficult times, the unemployment rate is well in excess of 7 percent. In New Jersey, there are 99 areas for computing unemployment. Of the 99, 35 had rates in excess of 7\1/2\ percent in 1994. So you can see that this is a major loophole to this 5-year requirement. What else? Well, teenagers are exempt. Anybody who is a teenager does not have a 5-year limit. If you have a child while you are a teenager, you do not have a 5-year limitation. Your limitation does not kick in until you become the age of maturity and beyond. So you can get a much longer period of time if you have children when you are a teen. It does not apply to mothers who are having children. You get a year exemption. If you have a child, you have a 1-year exemption. It extends your 5-year limit another year. And it goes on and on. There are literally pages of exemptions for people to the 5 years. All I would suggest is it is a phony 5 years. And remember, this only applies, to begin with, to 20 percent of the caseload; 20 percent of the people who go into the system have to go into this kind of program with all of these exemptions in place. That is 20 percent of the remaining caseload--not 20 percent of everybody but 20 percent of the people who are not exempt. So you take the people who are exempt out first and then you say you have to have 20 percent. To give you an idea how that compares with the Republican bill, the Republican bill is 20 percent of everybody, whether they are exempt or not. In fact, there are no exemptions in the Republican plan. The State can figure out who is exempt if they want to. It goes up to 50 percent in the Republican bill; in the Democratic bill, over a period of 5 years, but again the Democrats have this huge exempt group out here that never has to participate in this program. So it is a phony 5 years and a phony number of people who are going to be in this kind of program. Under the Dole-Packwood bill, the savings in the welfare program over the next 7 years are $70 billion. That is less than the House bill. The House bill is $60 some billion but it is over 5 years. The Senate bill is $70 billion over 7 years, and, of course, the House bill will be much more over 7 years. The Democratic bill, $21 billion over 7 years-- $21 billion over 7 years in programs that spend over $100 billion a year. Take in one case the child support enforcement provision. Very important. The Senator from California, Senator Feinstein, was absolutely correct that this is a very important aspect of the bill, to track down deadbeat dads--and 98 percent of the folks who owe back child support are fathers--to track down deadbeat dads and get them to pay the back child support. We are talking about over $50 billion in back child support owed in this country. So this is a very important provision in this bill. You would think that when tracking down deadbeat dads and getting them to pay the child support, as we do in this bill, that part of the child support paid back would go to the State, because it would offset the welfare payments that are being made to mom. In other words, if the mother and children get child support, they no longer get welfare. This would actually be a cost savings to the Federal Government. And, in fact, in the Dole bill it saves $155 million a year, $1.2 billion over 7 years. The Democratic bill costs $261 million over the next 3 years. That is the only estimate we have at this point. So it costs money over those 3 years. What does this bill do for State flexibility? You are hearing a lot about getting the bill and the program back to the States, back to the localities where they solve the problems the best, giving State flexibility. You will hear, as I have on some shows with some Members of the other side talking about welfare, the term ``partnership.'' What the Democratic bill does is create a partnership between the Federal Government and the State government, and that this partnership will be forged where they work together to solve the problems of poverty. It sounds so nice, except it is not true. A partnership is where each party has a say in the decision; that they work together to come to a decision jointly. That is exactly what happens under the Republican bill. Some decisions are made predominantly in Washington, other decisions are made predominantly in the State. Most of them in fact are made by the State. Under the Democratic bill, all the decisions are still made in Washington. You want to do something different in your State? You have to ask Washington for permission. I do not know too many people who are going to get involved in the partnership where the one partner basically can tell the other partner no all the time and go ahead and do whatever they want to do without asking them. But that is this partnership that they would have you believe is a partnership. That is the current system. The current system already allows for waivers. This does not change it any. It just says we will be nicer and give you more. But that is up to the President to decide. You can see there is even some little special interest things in the Democratic bill that remind you what constituency they are really serving here, and it is not the poor. This is not the poor. There is a provision in this bill that has to do with the Work First program, the program that they get people in to get to work immediately upon getting on welfare. [[Page S 11834]] Participants in the Daschle bill program would be forbidden to fill any unfilled vacancy--in other words, ``participants'' meaning employers--employers would be prohibited from filling any unfilled vacancy at their place of employment or to perform any activities that would supplant the hiring of employed workers not funded under the program. What does this mean? This means if you have a vacancy and you are in a unionized job--most of these participants would be governed--that you not fill a job slot with a welfare employee; you have to hire the union person first. So unions do not lose any positions under this. The Government has to fill the job created in the bureaucracy with another unionized person. They cannot take a slot and fill it with a welfare recipient who wants to get the job opportunity. Oh, no. We have to bow to the AFL-CIO here on the floor and make sure that any jobs we create for this new work-force program are basically new--probably in many cases make-work jobs--because you cannot even supplant the hiring of employed workers. You cannot even supplant the hiring of employed workers. This is one big bout to the AFL-CIO and one big ``Who cares?'' to the poor. We do not want to give you good job opportunities and opportunities where you can, in effect, learn some skills in jobs that are needed. We want to make jobs for you and keep you on the dole. That is where this program goes. It keeps the gravy train running. It keeps the entitlements and keeps the control, and it keeps everything decided here in Washington and spends more money in the process. I know a lot of people in this country are looking for welfare reform. But you have not found it here. It does not exist in this proposal. I do not know if I need to start another chart of how many days it will be since Democrats have come up with a welfare reform proposal, because this is not it. If you want to get serious about welfare reform, let us talk about working together on a bipartisan basis for something real, something that fundamentally changes things, not playing around with the existing programs, spending more money and paying off your constituencies that help you get elected. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. I am sorry, the Senator from California has not been here for the many occasions that I have been questioned on this chart. On each one of those occasions I have been asked a question about who am I referring to. This is referring to the President's lack of a balanced budget.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I wanted to rise today to continue discussing welfare with a little different tack on it than yesterday. I want to talk about what is going on on the other side of the aisle, and how the President and the Senators on the Democratic side are participating, or, in some cases, not participating, in this debate. I have been on the floor on many occasions over the past several months to talk about the President's abdication of responsibility in dealing with the most important issue that we have to deal with here in this session of the Congress and one of the most important issues we deal with in every sense of the Congress, and that is passing a budget--passing a reconciliation bill. In this case, a very important reconciliation bill, because it is one that will bring our budget into balance. I got up on the floor of the Senate on many occasions and suggested that the President has not come to the table in that respect in offering a balanced budget. I have not been to the floor in recent weeks because the President has not really been talking about his budget--the one that he proposed, the 10-year balanced budget that he proposed. I am not going about espousing how this brings us into balance, but yesterday he did an interview on NPR talking about how irresponsible the Republican budget was, how irresponsible the Republicans were on Medicare, how irresponsible the Republicans are being on welfare, and I thought it was time to bring to the Senate floor and remind people of how many days it has been since we put up a responsible Republican balanced budget over a period of 7 years, and how long it has been since the President has refused to come to the table and do so. He gets away with a lot in the national media. I am not surprised with NPR, but I would be surprised with any [[Page S 11832]] other mainstream media that he gets away with saying he lived up to his responsibility. He says, ``My responsibility was fulfilled when I offered them an alternative balanced budget and a willingness to discuss it.'' When did he offer such an alternative budget? He did not. The Congressional Budget Office scored the President's balanced budget over 10 years as producing annual deficits of $200 billion a year as far as the eye can see. There is no balanced budget. Standing here and wishing it were so, saying that because you can cook the numbers at the White House and change all the economic assumptions, assume faster growth, lower interest rates, that there will not be any other problems out there, that does not make it a balanced budget. The President himself said that he would stick with the Congressional Budget Office because they have been the most accurate in assessing whether a budget comes into balance or not and what the provisions cost that we pass here in Washington. But he has abandoned that, and he has gone with the Office of Management and Budget--his own internal recordkeeping to come up with this phony budget that he trots around the country suggesting that he has come forward with a balanced budget. He has not. It is absolutely amazing to me that the members of the press corps continue to publish this as if he has actually come forward with a balanced budget when he has not. But this should be no surprise. It is 83 days since the President has refused to come forward with a balanced budget after the Republicans have. It has been an equal number of days since he has been unwilling to come forward with a specific Medicare proposal, to tell us how he is going to get savings. In his 10-year balanced budget, he does call for a reduction in Medicare spending. That is interesting to note, because he is running around the country saying how the Republicans are going to gut Medicare because they are going to cut Medicare. I know the esteemed chairman of the Finance Committee has said on many occasions, as has the Budget Committee chairman from New Mexico, Medicare is going to grow under the Republican budget at 6.4 percent per year. What does it grow under the President's budget? At 7.1 percent. What does it grow if we do nothing? At 10.5 percent. You can say the Republicans are reducing the rate of spending, of growth in Medicare. But you also have to say the President is doing the same thing. In fact, there is only about $11 billion a year difference between the Republicans' and Democrats' number. That is, by the way, out of a program that is roughly a $200-billion-a-year program. So to suggest the Republicans are slashing when the President is not, that is just not living up to the realities of what is going on here. The President goes after Medicare as much as we do, almost. He does not consider that a cut. We do not consider ours a cut. We consider it strengthening the program because otherwise it would go bankrupt. He knows that as well as we do. So, let us own up to what the problem is on Medicare. The reason I started with these two is now we are at the third major issue of the day, of the times, and that is welfare reform. And where is the President? Where is the President who ran as a moderate Democrat on one issue, welfare? It was the defining issue, in the American public's eye, that made him different from Michael Dukakis or Walter Mondale. He was for ending welfare as we know it. He was the moderate Democrat, the new Democrat who was going to come forward and change the system. Where is he? Where is the proposal? Oh, he trotted out something late last year, 19, 20 months into his term, that was dismissed by both sides as an irrelevant welfare bill--an irrelevant welfare bill. Even in comparison to what the Democratic leader has put up here, it was modest. It was truly rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Where is he this year on an issue that he says is the most important issue to face this country? Where is he? Where is the welfare reform proposal that really takes us in a new direction, that really reaches into the communities where poverty is at its worst and gives the people in those communities a chance, that changes the whole dynamic of the system? Where is that proposal? It is nonexistent. It is more than 83 days. Hundreds of days have gone by without the President being relevant. Oh, that does not mean he cannot sit in the Oval Office and throw darts at the Republican plan. We will see lots of that; of how this is cruel and how it does not solve the problem. But where is his answer? Where is the leadership on the budget, with real numbers, with real choices and decisions? Where is the leadership on Medicare, that everyone in this Chamber knows will be bankrupt in 7 years? Where is the leadership? Where is the leadership on welfare, his defining issue? Oh, it is political season down on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is time just to criticize what the Congress is doing and hope the voters do not notice that you do not have anything to offer yourself. One thing I will say, the minority leader, the Democratic leader and others on the Democratic side, have actually come up with a proposal. They have actually put forward a proposal on welfare. I will add, just to be consistent in comparison, that the Democratic leader offered no balanced budget. No balanced budget, no substitute budget was offered. There were no ideas on how they would get to a balanced budget. Oh, there were plenty of criticisms, plenty of amendments, but no Democratic budget to get this country into balance. Medicare--I have not seen any program offered on the other side of the aisle on how we are going to solve the Medicare problem. I have not seen anything, not even a discussion of a discussion. Not even a possible meeting on the subject. Again, there is plenty of criticism on what the Republicans want to do and the fact we are even thinking of doing it. But not one solution on the other side of the aisle, not one discussion on how they would solve the problem that everyone in this Chamber knows exists. But now we move to welfare, and so they are 0 for 2 and they have decided maybe this time, instead of watching the strikes go past, they are going to take a swing at it. They are going to take a swing and see if we can put forward a welfare plan that can attract some support among the American public. Unfortunately, they swung and they missed and missed badly. This is a strikeout. This is a strikeout. It is a strike against the people who are in the system who need the help. It is a strike against those who have to pay for this system. The Daschle bill tinkers with welfare. In fact, I would even add that it may make things worse rather than improve them. It, in fact, spends more money. It eliminates AFDC--that is the big claim, they eliminate AFDC. Again, it is changing the name of the program. But there is still an entitlement program there for mothers and children. It is called now the Temporary Employment Assistance Program. It replaces the AFDC Program but it is still a Federal program with Federal guidelines administered in Washington, run by bureaucrats here in Washington, administered through the State. It costs $16 billion more than the current AFDC Program. No, it does not spend less, it spends more on AFDC--now called TEAP--but $16 billion more over the next 7 years. They say it puts time limits in. Remember, the President ran saying we are going to put a 2-year limit on welfare and at some point we are going to cut people off of welfare if they refuse to work? The minority leader would have you believe his bill puts time limits on welfare. It does not. It puts a 5-year limit on the--and this is in the bill, they do not use the word ``person,'' they use the word ``client.''

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise, first off, in support of the Dole substitute. And I want to congratulate the leader, the leadership, the leadership of the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Packwood, and many others who contributed to this bill and taking what was, by all accounts in the newspaper, an issue that was dead and gone for the summer and maybe for a long time after that and resurrecting that issue and bringing it to the floor with, I think, a very solid base of support on the Republican side of the aisle, and I am hopeful a very strong base of support on the Democrat side of the aisle. I think we have a good bill here, one that can attract bipartisan support, one that, the majority leader has said, is not veto bait--at least yet--at the White House. I hope that is a good start, and I hope over the next several days we can work in a bipartisan fashion to structure a bill that will truly make substantive and great reform in an area that probably needs it worse than any other single area in Government--not just for the taxpayers, who we hear so much about, but for the people in the welfare system. I have been fortunate enough to be able to work on this issue quite some time now--at least quite some time in my career here in the Congress. I worked 3 years ago in crafting a bill that came to the Republican position in the House of Representatives in the House Ways and Means Committee, and it became the basis for the bill that passed the House, which I am very proud of. It was a good bill. I think what we have done here in the Senate is a very good bill. In some respects, it goes farther. It is more dramatic than what the House Republican measure has done, particularly in the area of food stamps. Food stamp reform here is at least as tough--the reforms themselves. But we in the Senate in this bill give the States an option to take block grants. It is their option. In the House bill, they cannot do that unless they have electronic benefits transfer. So, in a sense, we have gone one step further here in the Senate than they have in the House bill. The AFDC work requirement--the standards are tougher here in the Senate bill than they are in the House bill. The work requirements are equally as tough as the House bill. So you could even make the argument that the AFDC provisions of this bill are tougher than the House bill. I think that is a very big plus. It is a look at certain areas and to say we have come out, after reviewing what the House has done, and think we can go a little farther. In some areas we do not go as far as the Senator from Texas, Senator Gramm, and Senator Faircloth from North Carolina would like to go; frankly, as far as I would like to go. I think we can go farther, and should, in doing block grants. Child nutrition programs, school lunch programs, and the like--I think the reforms done in the House were good, solid reforms, well thought out, and actually better targeted the resources at the people who need them. But they turned out to be very controversial measures. One that elicited, I think, a public outcry and one that, I think, we determined in putting this bill together was better left to maybe the next round of welfare reform, which may not be too far in the offing, but to focus in on the things that we can accomplish, hopefully, in a bipartisan manner, and that is focusing in on AFDC, what most people consider welfare. It is only a part of the welfare pot. Some would say it is 7 percent. Others would say it is a little bit more than that. But it is a very small portion of what we spend on means-tested programs, in other words, programs that are directed toward low-income people. The biggest single program is Medicaid. That is the largest welfare program, means- tested entitlement program. Most people think AFDC is second. It is not. The second largest means-tested program is SSI, which I will talk in somewhat detail about during my opening statement. Then we get down to programs like food stamps; on down the list is AFDC. But AFDC is considered welfare because it is the program that was designed in 1935 to help mothers with dependent children. It is the program that gets the most publicity. It is important to reform that program. But it is no less important to look at the other means-tested entitlement programs and appropriated accounts and reform those programs, too, and to make the reforms work together. One of the good planks in this bill is the fact that States can work together with housing benefits and food stamps and Medicaid and others to make sure that when you cut off AFDC benefits, if, in fact, someone is cut off, that their food stamp benefits do not go up to compensate for the reduction in the AFDC. So they can work with those two programs together to make sure one is not offsetting the penalties of the other. Another very good part of this bill, something the Senator from Missouri, Senator Ashcroft, has brought to the table and I think is a very good idea, is how the private sector can get more involved in providing welfare; for the States to be able to contract to community providing organizations, including churches, who are in there in the community right now doing the work that is necessary to help the poor in their community. Why not have them be the local agency that helps that community and the people in that community solve their problems of poverty? Why not give them the resources and the responsibility to help people in the community? That is a great idea. It gives flexibility to the States which they have never had before. We know historically in this country what works to help poor people get out of poverty. It is not just passing a check. I think, if there is anything that we can all agree on, it is that just handing a check over to someone does not solve the poverty problem. What helps people get out of poverty is not a guaranteed income from the Government, but an opportunity to go out and work and earn it for themselves. We know that check does not encourage what we know works, which is work. That guaranteed income does not encourage work. What does encourage work is people who care, people who care about that individual and know that they are going through the trouble to take the time to listen. This is no fault of the caseworkers in the welfare system. They are processing thousands of checks a day. They cannot afford and do not have the time. The caseworkers do not have the time to sit one on one to go through the life history of the person, whether it is a problem with their husband, whether it is a substance abuse problem, or satisfy a problem with their parents, or whatever else; an illness. They do not have the time to sit and care. They do not have the resources to do it. We need a system that is more friendly to people who need help, not just saying, ``Well, here is your check. Leave us alone. You should be OK. You have been provided for.'' Actually, we should start turning this program, this welfare bureaucracy, over to the people who live in that community, who see that neighbor at church, who walk past them in the aisle in the grocery store, and who care because a better person in their community means a better community and a better life for them. Let us use what we know works, and that is people helping people. [[Page S 11770]] That is what we are saying in this bill--let us get it back to the folks who care the most, and it is not us. We say we care a lot. But I do not consider it particularly compassionate on my part to take your money--the people who are out working in America--and then give it to somebody else who is not working. It may make me feel good that I am helping someone who is poor, who maybe cannot work, who maybe is having problems and needs to get their life together again. That may make me feel good. But that certainly is not compassionate. A lot of people around here will define the terms in this debate on how much money we take from some people to give to other people, that the more we take from workers to give to other people, many of whom do not work, the more compassionate we are. I would say, that is not a very good judge of compassion on my part. To know how much money I give out of my salary to my church or to the community group--that is compassion. That is money otherwise I could spend. But taking other people's money is not compassion. That is how we have measured compassion in this country for a long, long time. I find it absolutely unbelievable that we do. I tell you, it would be very easy for me to just hand out all the money that I can get my hands on around here. It is fun. We enjoy doing that. But it is not compassion. More than anything else, it is not helping anybody. I think we, hopefully, have come to that determination in this body; that just handing it out makes a bunch of people who pay for the program very resentful and the people who receive the money very dependent. It does not help either. Let us get back to something that we know works--getting it back to the local level, getting it back to the people who care. And that is what this program is all about. Some will say, ``Well, it is just passing the buck.'' My initial response to that is, if the buck is being misspent here, let us at least give someone else a try. Maybe passing the buck in this case is the best thing to do because we know what the current system is doing. The Senator from New York, who knows more about welfare than anyone in this Chamber, having studied it for years and years, presented the case very well for why the system does not work. I mean, the statistics do not lie about the problems that we have in poverty in America today and the growth in illegitimacy and the lack of work in the inner cities where welfare is the highest, the destruction of communities, the increase in crime, the destruction of the family, lower rate levels of education among the poor. I mean the scenario is very clear what is going on here. We know it is not working. The question is how much courage do we have to say that what we have tried has failed? What we know historically in this country that has worked has not been given a chance, at least from the Federal perspective, in a long time. Let us try that. You will hear this quote often throughout the discussion on welfare. In fact, I have heard it many times already in this body. But I think it is so appropriate. It is such a good codification of the American spirit and what the greatness of America is all about in solving the problems of the people who are of lesser means, and that was de Tocqueville's analysis of America. When he came to this country over 100 years ago and looked at the private sector, the institutions, the volunteer organizations, the people who went out of their way to help their neighbors, the sense that Americans cared for each other and supported each other, there were not the Government programs--there was no AFDC Program when de Tocqueville was here, no SSI Program. There was none of that. Not to say those programs are bad, but none of that was here. It was private charity, people helping people. And de Tocqueville commented that ``America is great because it is good.'' And when America ceases to be good, it will no longer be great. We need to draw on the goodness of people. We need to entrust the people to be good. That is what this bill is all about. It says that we, standing on high, are not going to dictate what is good for everyone but in fact put the resources back into the community so those people can determine what is good for themselves and their neighbors. It is a very dramatic turnaround in policy in this country. It is one that will frighten a lot of people because a lot of people think, as the Senator from Kansas, the majority leader, said, there will be a race to the bottom; that States will race to the bottom and they will cut benefits on everybody, as if Governors and State legislators have little care about the welfare of the poor in their State but we in Washington care supremely for them. I do not think anybody truly believes that, but that is the comment you are going to hear many times repeated here, that States simply will not provide for the poor; that we cannot trust them; that they will try to export them to another State, which will in turn try to export them to another State, and they will go to another State. I do not know what all is being suggested, but that is pretty much how it is going to play out. I do not think that is going to happen. I think there are a lot of States--the Senator from Iowa got up and talked about how wonderful a job Iowa is doing in reforming the program. And I would say there is nothing in the bill the Senator from Oregon and the majority leader have put forward to stop Iowa from doing it. In fact, it would provide more flexibility to Iowa. I do not understand what he thinks the trouble is, but it would enable Iowa to do more that works. I think this is the mentality. The problem is we know, or I know that this works in Iowa, and therefore I am going to tell everybody this is what they have to do. Well, just because it works in Iowa does not mean it is going to work in Alaska or Pennsylvania or anywhere else. And it has been working in Iowa for 1 year, so now we should take the Iowa experiment and tell everybody to do this? What if Pennsylvania has a good program, and we have some good things in practice, and what if we made Iowa do that? What if we told Iowa: You cannot do what you are doing anymore because we in Washington now think something works in Pennsylvania and we should make you do that. The Senator from Iowa, I am sure, would have objection to that. And you know what? He would be right in objecting. So I do not think that is a very serious objection to this bill. This bill is one that I would think Members who come from States that like the welfare program they have, that have popular support for it, would embrace it, would embrace this bill as an idea whose time has come. We do a lot in this bill. We reform AFDC. We require work. We have some illegitimacy programs, not as far as I would go, but we will have amendments and we will have good debates on that here on the Senate floor. It provides the flexibility that I discussed, which I think is so important to States and communities, to deal with it. It ends the entitlement to AFDC; allows States to determine who is eligible for those benefits. I think it is very important to do that. We reform the school lunch programs and nutrition programs, child nutrition programs. We block grant job training and day care, and we do it, as I think everyone will agree, with a substantial amount on child support enforcement, including interstate enforcement of child support orders, which, as the Senator from Ohio commented earlier, is absolutely essential if we are going to get our arms around the problem of over $50 billion in uncollected child support. Let me repeat that: $50 billion are owed mostly by fathers to support their children and is simply uncollectable because we do not track that. I want to move on to another area where I hope we can have agreement, an area of welfare that as I mentioned before is the second largest single welfare program in America, and that is the SSI Program. The SSI Program was created back in 1974. It is the Supplemental Security Income Program. As I said before, it is the second largest means-tested entitlement program, second to Medicaid. In 27 States, the average child SSI payment is greater than the AFDC payment for a family of four. So if you have a child on SSI, you get more money in 27 States than a family of four on AFDC. This is a big dollar program, and as you can see, it is growing, particularly since the late 1980's, at a [[Page S 11771]] tremendous rate, close to $30 billion--in fact, as of 1994, it is over $30 billion this year. AFDC payments, as we have discussed here, in 1994 figures, are around $17 billion; SSI, as you can see there, almost $28 billion. Federal outlays in the year 2000, if we do nothing, for AFDC are projected to be $20 billion. That is $3 billion more than today. On the other hand, SSI is going to go up to about $43 billion--a much faster growing program, and SSI does not get a lot of the ink. An individual cannot receive SSI and AFDC simultaneously, but members of an AFDC family may receive SSI benefits. That results in a situation that was quoted in an article here earlier, the Rivera family of Boston. Eulalia Rivera has 16 children, 89 progeny, and they collect in benefits from the Federal Government between $750,000 and $1 million a year in means-tested welfare benefits. Most of that benefit, by the way, is not AFDC. It is SSI, supplemental security income. What is this program, SSI? Well, the program was created back in 1974, which was intended to be a work supplement for people who were disabled and could not work but did not work enough quarters to be able to qualify for Social Security disability. I want to differentiate in the discussion here between SSI, which is supplemental security income, and SSDI, which is disability income out of the Social Security trust fund. SSI is not out of the Social Security trust fund. It is out of the general fund. People do not have to have any work history to be able to collect. Who qualifies for SSI? Well, the disabled, the elderly, the blind, drug addicts and alcoholics, children. You might ask: Well, wait a minute. Why are children covered under an act that was created to supplement income for people who are not able to work? Children obviously do not earn income anyway, so why do we have a program here in place to support children who do not earn income? That is a good question to ask. I do not think there was ever a good answer to it at the time it was created. But it has evolved over to say, well, it is used because parents of people with disabilities cannot work, and so it indirectly supplements their income. Of course, you lose that point because a lot of parents do not work anyway, at least second parents do not work where the mothers or fathers do not work if you have a primary income earner. Nevertheless, that is in place. You can use the argument it is there because there are medical needs for the people who are disabled and you need the cash to pay for that, except for the fact that if you qualify for SSI, you also qualify for Medicaid, which, of course, pays your medical benefits. So, in a lot of cases SSI is a nice chunk of change. And it is, in fact, a $458-a-month Federal benefit per child. Now, we have reforms in this bill that address three areas of SSI: children on SSI; drug addicts and alcoholics; and immigrants, aliens, sponsored aliens in particular. Let me first talk, if I can, about children. It is a controversial area to talk about, one that a lot of folks do not like to address. Most people do not like the fact of targeting disabled children and say, ``Why do we want to cut off benefits to children who are disabled?'' I would suggest to you that the leader's proposal does not cut off benefits to children who are truly disabled. In fact, that is the whole point. If you look at what has gone on in the past few years with the number of children receiving SSI, in 1990 there were 300,000 children on SSI. That number was fairly flat from the 1970's through 1990, I mean, increasing gradually but not substantially. In 1990, 300,000; to 900,000 by 1995, which is this year, and they expect another 200,000 people on the caseloads. You will have 1.1 million kids, estimated, by the year 2000, 1.4 million on SSI. You say, ``Wait a minute. What has happened here that we have had this explosion of children on SSI rolls?'' There was a decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Zebley decision, which changed the criteria for which children could be eligible for SSI. This is sort of an amazing little thing that was not well known and is becoming more well known. That is why you see these numbers go up. Before, you had to have a severe disability to be able to receive these benefits. You had to be mentally retarded, you know, or have cerebral palsy or some debilitating disease or illness or condition that would require the Government to support this child. No longer. The new criterion is called an individual functional assessment. And what is an individual functional assessment? They actually go in and talk to the child and try to figure out if their behavior is--this is the standard--age appropriate. So if you have age and appropriate behavior--who here has not?--but if you have age and appropriate behavior, you now qualify for $458 a month. That is true. So, what is happening? I am sure this will not be a surprise to a whole lot of people here. What teachers and pediatricians and social workers are saying is that SSI puts marginally disabled or nondisabled children on the dole for their life, hides children's real problems, such as abusive or neglectful parents, and results in creating a class of people who are at a very early age determined disabled when their disability is not such that they should be labeled disabled. Are we helping these children? Most of the people who look at this program say, no, we are not. We are not helping these children at all by labeling them as ``disabled.'' Most of these people that have come on since the Zebley decision in 1990, two-thirds of them, in fact, have come on because of a mental impairment. Learning disabilities; a learning disability qualifies you for $458 a month; attention deficit syndrome, $458 a month. Let me tell you a couple of comments from school administrators. This is a school administrator in New York Central Park East Secondary School. ``Parents whose children have minimal handicaps try to get their children into special education classes so they can qualify for SSI.'' Here is a student at one of the schools in a New York City elementary school. She is acting out her tale with dolls. This was a play-acting thing that she was going through in the school. She described a mother of four who had adopted two more children. Although the new siblings were not working out, the mother planned to keep them anyway, the girl explained, because she wanted the extra money in SSI payments that they were bringing in. ``[The child who described this] is a special education student. She doesn't understand much,'' says school psychological aide, Beth Mahaney, ``but she understands how the system works.'' Disability checks are there to help replace lost earnings. And what have we turned it into? Again, parents do not need this money for medical supplies. Attention deficit syndrome does not require medical supplies, and a lot of these mental conditions do not require it. And if they did, again, Medicaid is there to provide for it. This is a program that harms children. One of the ways mentioned earlier that it harms is that it masks abusive and neglectful parents. A lot of the problems--and we have a caseworker or a psychologist who has done a lot of work with SSI for kids come in and talk to me. She cannot give me any of the names of the kids because of confidentiality, but she has given me a list of examples of abuse, horrible abuse of these children. As a result of the parent's abuse, the parents get $458 a month because their child is so messed up because of them. Is that not a great reward for parents who abuse their kids? They get a check. In fact, a Philadelphia psychiatrist, Kenneth Carroll told the Washington Post, Many of the problems these children manifest are largely traceable to parental neglect or abuse. Behavior and emotional problems or conduct disorders are directly attributable to inadequate parenting and have often been called disabilities. And the parents are receiving a cash award for having achieved the problem. What the Packwood bill does, Dole bill does, in fact what the Gramm bill does--same thing--it says we are going to eliminate individual functional assessments. We are going to get back to giving benefits to children who are truly disabled and stop disabling another generation of Americans for all the wrong reasons at a big, big expense of taxpayers' dollars and of children's lives. The next area we are going to get into in SSI reform is expenditures on [[Page S 11772]] drug addicts and alcoholics. Yes, believe it or not, if you are so addicted to drugs and alcohol that you can no longer work, you can get a check from the Federal Government, $458 a month in benefits because you are so addicted to heroin or alcohol that you can no longer work. These are the numbers. See, in dollars spent, we spent $14 million in 1985 on drug addicts and alcoholics. In 1990, it was $84 million. In 1994 it was $433 million, and climbing. You might say, what is the reason for the dramatic increase in these numbers? There are a couple. Let me give you probably the biggest. This started under the Bush administration, so it has bipartisan blame, but it has been continued, in fact expanded, under the Clinton administration. What is this program that I talk about that is responsible for this dramatic growth in this program? You see the dollar growth. Let me show you the number of people. We were at 5,000 drug addicts and alcoholics in 1985 in this program, 5,000. Ten years later 120,000 people are on this program. Two years from now it will be almost 200,000 people on this program. And you can see numbers going up and up. You may say, what is causing this? Is alcoholism and drug addiction going up? No. That has not gone up dramatically. If you look at some of those numbers, the numbers have leveled off and, in many cases, gone down. So why the increase? Well, it is because of a program that was instituted by the Bush administration on a pilot basis, but has now become a program that is all over the place in the United States and most of the major cities already. It is an outreach program. You say, an outreach program? Yes, an outreach program. We now spend Federal dollars to go out to the communities, to go into the homeless shelters, to go into the clinics, to go into the streets and the alleys and find drug addicts and alcoholics so that we can give them money. It is working. The program is working. We are finding them, and we are giving them money. Now, you could say, OK, what is the next logical question one would ask? We are going to go out and find them and give them money. What would be the next thing you would ask? I would ask, are you helping these people? Is it working? Are people being helped by being on this program? Well, let me give you the opinion of one person who testified before the Aging Committee this year. In fact, he has testified in the past. A person, by the way, who has done a lot of work on this issue and whose ideas are partly reflected in this bill by Senator Cohen of Maine. It is Bob Cote, who runs a drug and alcohol halfway house in Denver, CO, says: Our compassion literally kills them. I know of 41 individuals who received SSI checks and died from the binge they went on. Others just go on drinking it month after month. They call the first day of the month ``Christmas Day,'' because it is when the checks come. They take those checks directly to the bars, and when the money is gone, they are back in my shelter. Taxpayers should not be subsidizing addictions. There is an article--a series of articles, in fact--by the Baltimore Sun, about this program. Not only, again, is it a fast-growing program, but what is the impact on the people in the program? Bob Cote will tell you people are dying. What will Shirley Chater say? Shirley Chater is the Administrator of the Social Security Administration. When she testified before the Ways and Means Committee last year on this subject and I asked her, ``In the history of the drug addicts and alcoholics program under SSI, how many people have you documented that have been cured, have received the check, gone in and got the required treatment, gotten off the program, stopped the checks, and have gone on to productive lives?'' Do you know what her answer was? ``In the 20-year history of the program, documented cases of recovery are zero.'' Zero documented cases of recovery. Now, does this program work? Are we helping drug addicts and alcoholics? Let me give you a couple of examples of people. This is from a Baltimore Sun article, and I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record.

Mr. SANTORUM. This is about 34-year-old Ernie Hernandez. This part of the article says: The 34-year-old heroin addict and father of two sits in the brown grass outside the San Joaquin County drug clinic in French Camp, CA, a desolate farm town east of San Francisco. He fidgets with his beefy hands as he describes his 6 years on SSI. A one-time cannery worker and farm laborer, he has no apparent physical problem that would keep him from working. He is lucid in conversation. And at 6 feet tall and 225 pounds, he's built like a weight lifter. ``I admit it,'' he says, ``I don't look sick.'' But he's collecting $458 a month in SSI, which qualifies him for a $200 supplemental payment from the State, bringing his tax-free monthly take to $658--about the same-- States supplement the SSI benefits, California being one, with an additional $200, in addition to being eligible for Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs. --about the same amount that the average retiree gets from Social Security after a lifetime of labor. ``The money definitely changes you,'' he admits. ``I just ain't going to risk losing the money by working at some minimum-wage job. Next thing I know, I get too stoned, I lose the job. Then what am I gonna do to feed my kids?'' Are we helping Ernie Hernandez? Well, Ernie is one of 6,000 heroin addicts who rotate on and off in the outpatient treatment program provided in French Camp throughout the year. In a region that has become a hotbed of disease, many of them suffer from tuberculosis and AIDS. Three out of every four are getting disability checks, according to the recent county survey. ``They'll test positive for heroin and we'll flunk them out of the program,'' Mr. Brown says. ``Then they'll sign back up on the waiting list and the whole thing starts all over again. I can honestly say that in my 21 years in this business, I have never had a disability recipient successfully complete the program.'' That is Floyd Brown, director of the drug treatment center in French Camp, who said, ``If SSI was around 20 years ago, when I was trying to get straight, I would probably be dead right now.'' Is this a program that is helping people? The answer is, obviously, no. We get rid of it. Under this bill, there are no checks for drug addicts and alcoholics anymore for this program. We are not going to continue to subsidize people who break the law by consuming illegal drugs. Finally, the issue of non-citizens. This gets to be a very touchy issue for a lot of people. I want to associate myself with the remarks of the Senator from Texas when he says that most non-citizens who come to this country--immigrants--come here with their sleeves rolled up ready to work, to provide for themselves, their families, and the opportunity to live the American dream. I stand here as a product of that. My father is an immigrant. He came here during the Depression. His father worked very hard in the coal mines for many, many years. It is, in fact, the American dream that the son of an immigrant can stand on the floor of the U.S. Senate, as many have before me. No one wants to deter people from coming to this country, no one wants to take away the opportunities that come with living in America, nor do we want to be the beacon of the world for the handout. We want to say to people, [[Page S 11775]] if you want to bring your mother here, who is 70 years old, to come and live with you, and you sign a sponsorship agreement that says you will provide for them--which you do under current law--then you should provide for them, and not as many do, turn them over to the SSI Department or the Social Security Administration through the State, in some cases, turn them over so they can collect Government benefits because they are out there and therefore qualified for SSI. Here are the numbers of non-citizens. In 1982, about 125,000 non- citizens received SSI. We were up to 700,000 as of 1993, and that number is growing fast. It is a serious problem and one that we have to address. It is a philosophical decision, one the House made in favor, and I am hopeful we will make it here, too. People who come to this country should come for the opportunities provided to them and not for the benefits that could inure to them because of welfare. So what we say is, simply, reap the benefits of the fastest-growing economy in the world over the past many years--jobs and opportunities--but not for welfare benefits. If you are a sponsored immigrant--let me finally explain the difference between other immigrants and sponsored immigrants. We are not talking about refugees, people who were in a war-torn country, like Bosnia, who come on the shores or who are fleeing the former Soviet Union. Now, those people would not be affected by the change being proposed here in SSI. Only people who come to this country who are sponsored to be here by--in almost all cases--a family member; where the family member signs a document saying that they will provide for this person if they come here, and the person signs a document that says, ``I will not be a charge or ward of the State'' when they come here. We are saying, we should enforce this agreement. If families want to be reunited on American soil, fine; but it should not be the role of the American taxpayers to be the retirement home for millions of people who want to bring their parents to this country to retire with them. That is what is going on, if you see the numbers of seniors, in the vast majority of these numbers. That is the problem. What we are suggesting is, the door is open to reunite families, but it should not be at the expense of the taxpayers of this country, given the fact that these seniors have contributed nothing and worked, in many cases, not at all in this country and paid nothing in taxes. Mr. President, I wanted to focus on the issues of SSI as, hopefully, issues that by and large can bring us together in this debate. I think they are issues that we can find consensus and agreement. I will remind people again that this is the second largest of all the means-tested entitlement programs, one that needs dramatic and sound reforms that have been put forward by the Finance Committee and the leadership bill as well as Senator Gramm's bill. I am hopeful we can work together on this particular area. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

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

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise to congratulate our leader, the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Packwood and others, who just went above and beyond the call of duty to bring together, I believe, a consensus welfare reform package here on the Republican side. The leader, in a few minutes, is going to lay down that package for us to begin debate next week. Second to our efforts to balance the budget, I think this is the next most important issue that we can deal with in the Senate and one that I think is at the top of the minds of not only the people of the United States who pay for the welfare system but the people in it. I think this is a bill that addresses the concerns of both those who are in the system and those who are paying for the system. The people who are paying for the system are going to get more results, more value, for their tax dollars that they are contributing, and more people are going to be helped into productive mainstream life in America. That is a value to the people who are paying and, obviously, a tremendous value to the people who find themselves dependent on welfare. What the leader has done, I think, is truly extraordinary. In a very difficult arena where we are trying to give authority back to the States, you run into problems such as, What is fair? How much do you give? And to what State based on what formula? We were able to, through the tremendous work of the Senator from Texas, Senator Hutchison, overcome that and come up with a formula that I think works for everyone. It does not disadvantage any State and provides growth opportunities for those States who are really up against it with burgeoning populations of not only the overall population but of the poor in our country. We have been able to handle the tough problems of how we are going to get work requirements and how many requirements. How many do we turn over to the States and how much do we retain here? In that partnership we seek to establish how much do we allow the States to innovate and how much do we want to oversee and require? And I think the leader's proposals, again, struck the proper balance of a true partnership, not one that the current administration would have you believe is a partnership where we will make all the decisions. You come to us when you want to change anything, and we will tell you if we think it is OK to do that, in everything you do. That is not a partnership, no more than a student asking the teacher for permission to go to the bathroom. If the teacher says, ``No you've got to go back to your seat.'' It is the same thing. If the State wants to improvise, and the President says, ``No, you have to go back to your seat,'' that is not a partnership. To call that a partnership is absurd. What we do is truly give authority, truly give discretion and give dollars, in some cases with strings, other cases without. But it is a partnership. And it was carefully crafted, and I think wonderfully done. And I am hopeful when we have this debate-- there will be debate--there will be amendments on the Republican side and amendments on the Democratic side to craft this bill over the next week. I think there will be a great debate here about the direction this country is going to take and the future of the role of Government in solving people's problems. Actually, one of the more innovative proposals that is in the leader's bill--also in other bills here--is to allow community groups to be the welfare agency, allow churches and community organizations and nonprofits who work in those neighborhoods to actually be the conduit agency to help and provide support for the poor in those neighborhoods--a radical concept of getting the government completely out and going to the people who care most, the neighbors, the pastors, the community activists. It is a wonderful concept. It is a breath of fresh air in what seems to be a hopeless cycle of dependency that we created in this Federal Government welfare policy. It is dramatic reform. You will hear, I am sure, some say, well, it does not go far enough, not radical enough, does not change enough. And I am sure you will hear many come to the floor and tell us how we are going to destroy neighborhoods and create mass homelessness and starve millions of children and, you know, the sky will fall. You will hear it from both sides. Usually, when that is the case, you get a pretty good feel you have a good bill because you have not satisfied the far extremes of either side. What we have done is taken a responsible approach, one I am very proud to be associated with. And before we got this debate underway, I wanted to congratulate the leader in his ability to forge this compromise, which I truly believe will get overwhelming support on the Republican side and get substantial support on the Democratic side of the aisle. Because I know there are many on that side of the aisle who see the problems in the current system and see this as a responsible remedy to that problem. I yield the floor. Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I was not intending to come down and speak on this, but after listening to the last couple of speeches, I decided I had to speak up and comment. I heard the Senator from North Dakota, back in my office, say that what we are doing here is neglecting to invest in human potential. If there is anything we are doing here with the defense bill--and by protecting our country--we are, in fact, doing just that. Look at all of the wars we fought and the people who have died and suffered and the country that has suffered so much through our wars. What human potential has been lost on the battlefield? You talk about human potential, look at the young men and women who have died. Look at that potential. That is gone. Educated, hard-working, bright people, trained, who gave up their lives because, in many cases, we were not ready. We did not invest in our armed services to do the fundamental mission that this Government was created for, to protect and defend this country. Do not talk to me about wasting human potential. This prevents the waste of human potential more than any single thing we can do. To suggest otherwise, that through some feel-good Government program, if we push out more money to people to invest in their potential it is going to change the world, somehow refresh America--you know, that some new Government social welfare program is going to save money, which is what the other side would have you believe we should invest in, is not the answer. The answer is, by creating peace and prosperity you will loose the human spirit and potential of every American and give them the opportunity, in a peaceful world, to reach their dreams. If you want human potential invested in, then you give a peaceful environment where people do not have to worry about going to war but worry about going to work. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee for yielding this time. I want to start out by congratulating the Senators from Connecticut for their fine work on this project, particularly Senator Lieberman, my colleague in the Armed Services Committee, for his outstanding work on this program. I come here as someone who in the past has been an opponent of the Seawolf. In fact, I introduced a bill back in 1991 which called for eliminating the 29 Seawolf submarines that were on the boards because I thought it was too costly, that it was a cold war [[Page S 11293]] relic, that 29 of these submarines was far too many, the threat was not out there for that kind of expenditure of, really, tens of billions of dollars. Having watched what has happened since 1991, and since I introduced that resolution, I have seen the number of Seawolf submarines go from 29 to 3, and I have seen the Russian Navy still be the focal point, as was said earlier. What I have seen in response, in the past 4 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, is the Russians keeping their eye on the ball of maintaining their capacity, their submarine capacity as really their focal point as to how they are going to be a world threat, militarily. That is where they have invested their money. So, while I would not stand up here and support another 27 Seawolf submarines, I will say that, given the threat that is out there, given the legitimacy of the dollars invested and the capability of the Russian fleet, nuclear submarine fleet and attack submarine fleet, that this is a wise investment for us. I repeat what the junior Senator from Connecticut said. We have a situation right now--and I agree with him, I do not think the American public realizes this--where the Russians are in fact ahead of us in a very important military capability and that is submarines. They are ahead of us. They have quieter ships than we do. That is stealth. You hear so much about stealth technology when it comes to the Air Force. That means you cannot see it on the radar and you can go in there and do things before anybody sees you. Stealth in a submarine is how quiet it is. If you cannot hear them you cannot find them. That is the situation we are in right now. We are sending our submariners out there, into the oceans of this world, in a sense blind--deaf to the threats that the former Soviet Union, the Russians are now putting forward. This is our response and it is an appropriate one. It is an appropriate place to invest those dollars. We do so recognizing if we pull the plug on the third Seawolf we will waste a whole lot of money. Already, as has been said many times, $900 million is already appropriated for this submarine. We have over a third of the costs already in the submarine. To close it down would cost even more. There are disputes. The Senator from Arizona, whom I greatly respect--I admire his ability to go into this defense budget and try to find areas where he believes there is waste. I respect that. There are some substantial disagreements as to the CBO calculations for the cost savings of the Seawolf submarine, discontinuing the Seawolf submarine. The Navy, in a document that was transmitted to me, says that they underestimate a lot of the costs, that they do not recognize that by shutting off this third Seawolf we will likely end production of any kind of ships at Electric Boat, in Connecticut. They do not count for the shutdown of that facility or the costs that would be incurred in future shipbuilding as a result of having just one shipyard. I think it is a substantial one, not just for our industrial base--which I happen to believe is important--but for the competitiveness that is necessary to get high-quality, low-cost ships in this country. I want to mention just one final thing. I want to talk about the industrial base, not from a State that has a huge submarine industrial base, although we have some. I will say one of the other reasons I support this third Seawolf is because I do believe we do need an industrial base of skilled technicians and companies that can produce this kind of very high-quality, demanding, and very specific high- quality work. If we do not continue this bridge, which the third Seawolf turns out to be, into the new attack submarine, we will not only have that new attack submarine cost more as a result, but I think we may not end up with as good a product. So I come here as a reformed Seawolf opponent who understands this is a project, an investment that is worthwhile to combat a serious threat to preserve an industrial base that is essential to the military capability, production capability of our country. I support it wholeheartedly and oppose the amendment of the Senator from Arizona. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. The Senator from Maine is recognized.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I think it is very important that everyone recognize the significance of what we in the Senate are doing by reforming the rules by which Members of the Senate may accept gifts. I strongly support a fair and workable gift reform bill and hope very much that the House of Representatives will see fit to swiftly pass similar legislation. The Senate need not and will not wait for the House of Representatives to act. We, upon passing this bill, will pass a Senate resolution amending the rules of the Senate to reflect the new gift provisions. What I want to touch on very briefly is the significance of amending the Senate rules. The amending of our rules represents a significant act. While some have suggested that we must and can only enact legislation to achieve reform, and while I intend to support such legislation, the fact is that we in the Senate will have achieved real gift reform when we pass a resolution amending our rules. The rules of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives, are full legal authorities promulgated under the express grant of power of article I, section 5 of the U.S. Constitution. Because we are acting from a direct grant of constitutional authority, these rules are for all intents and purposes ``laws.'' I emphasize this point because while the great weight of constitutional authority has long endorsed the significance, the power, and the role as law of the rules of the Senate and the House, a few recent court decisions have seemed to go against this overwhelming weight of authority. But no aberrational decisions of the lower courts should change in any way the fact that by amending the rules of the Senate we are acting under our constitutional grant of authority and we are taking a significant step having the full force and effect of law. Madam President, I am pleased that this legislation is before us today, and I support its passage.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from Wyoming for his comments and again for his leadership in bringing the freshmen to the floor on a regular basis [[Page S 10769]] to talk about the issues that are important to us. I rise to talk a little bit about welfare reform. I want to start by congratulating the senior Senator from West Virginia for his tremendous service in the U.S. Senate. I was in the chair at the time and did not have an opportunity to congratulate him personally, but I listened very carefully to the words that he spoke in receiving the congratulations from the Senate. His talk about the civility of the Senate struck me as a pertinent comment as to what goes on here. I share those concerns, that the body should be a civil body, and that we should be able to have a civil discourse as to the issues of the day. I also understand that there are certain periods in history where there occurs a fundamental realignment of thinking, where ideas of great magnitude clash that causes, at times, an uncivil reaction to those who are engaged in this ideological struggle. I think we are at the beginning of one of those times here in America and here in the U.S. Senate. Time will tell whether the election of last year, when we were all elected freshmen, and the changes that were brought here in the U.S. Senate, will be the beginning of a realignment politically in this country and ideologically in this country--a new way of governing in the United States. We do not know that. I suspect, and in fact, I hope, that is the case. We do not know that. I think there are many here who believe that is what is going on. Not really that different than what happened in the 1960's or what happened in the 1930's during the New Deal where we had a fundamental shift of the role of Government, and people here came with very different views of the way Government should operate. At times, because of the passion which we feel for our positions, and the distance between one side and the other, things can get a little hot and heated. I hope that we pay attention to what the Senator from West Virginia has said, and try to keep our civility, our level of civility, and our respect for our colleagues and their thoughts-- although we may disagree--keep that in mind. I do not think there is any issue that shows the fundamental difference that is going on in this country, as far as the direction of Government in our lives, than the issue of welfare. I have been working on that issue, as the Senator from Wyoming knows, for the past 3 or 4 years. I worked on it in the House of Representatives, the chairman of the task force that wrote the House Republican bill last year that by and large passed the House of Representatives this year. To look at what happened in the debate on welfare in the past 2 or 3 years is an enormous change. Even the bills now being put forward by the leadership on the other side have dramatically moved from the status quo positions that were being offered just a year or two ago by the President. I am encouraged by that. I think it does show a difference between how we believe on this side--or many believe, not all--to solve problems; how we have been doing it over the long period of years; and how we have been doing it, really, since the 1960's. We have been doing it with Government perhaps out of Washington, DC, where we attempt to provide for people who are less fortunate, with some Federal direct grant, cash, food stamps, housing, or whatever; but it is run out of Washington. It is administered out of here. Sure, there are local agencies that actually pass the money through, but all the decisions are made here, and then implemented down at the lower level where the individual just sort of receives the end product, which is usually a check, a stamp, or something tangible--usually not an exchange, other than qualifying because you are low income. There is no work required, no sense of duty or obligation to the people who have provided to give back. In fact, there is discouragement in many cases. Many believe that is fundamentally flawed. That a system that provides or seeks to provide for the poor, that does not expect anything in return, is a system that is doomed to failure. I think we have seen that it not only results in the failure of that individual in their ability to turn their lives around and come back, but it causes the destruction of the community, the family and the like when you say to someone that, because of their poverty, they are unable to provide for themselves or give or contribute back to society. That is what, unintentionally, indirectly, has occurred in our welfare system. That is the debate that will occur here in the U.S. Senate, I hope, in the next couple of weeks. We will have a bill on the floor, I am hoping the last week we are in session. We have been working, and I give a lot of credit to Senator Packwood who has done an absolutely outstanding job in working and trying to pull together the Republicans, with a bill we can come together and move forward with, that is dramatic and in sync with the principles I outlined. I want to commend Senator Dole who has been fostering that dialog; Senator Gramm for staking out a responsible position on the issue and trying to form the debate. We have a lot of good debate going on over here on this side of the aisle right now but the debate is not about dollars and cents. It is not about how much money we can save on welfare. It is not about how we can punish anybody. It is about one thing. That is, how do we give people who have less opportunity today, more opportunity, so they can live the American dream. That is what it is all about. That is what this welfare reform will be about. That is what our plan is going to be about. I am encouraged by that. I look forward to the debate. I think it will be a great one here on the floor of the Senate. I want to thank, again, the Senator from Wyoming for reserving this time. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, 2 days ago in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the town of Zepa, the second safe haven fell to the Bosnian Serbs, lending increasing urgency to the need to pass S. 21, the Dole-Lieberman bill. Mr. President, the U.S. Congress has voted on the issue of the arms embargo many times, but the fall of two U.N. safe havens has dramatically highlighted this ill-fated policy as never before. The failure of the U.N. peacekeepers to protect the enclaves and themselves is coupled with the knowledge that the Bosnian Government troops have been effectively rendered useless by their lack of heavy weaponry. As the fighting continues to escalate in Bihac, a third U.N. safe haven, it is time for the Clinton administration to abandon this doomed policy, accept that UNPROFOR must be withdrawn, and lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian Government. We have been warned many times by the Clinton administration that this bill would undermine efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement in Bosnia and could lead to an escalation of the conflict there, including the possible Americanization of the conflict. Mr. President, the conflict has already escalated. More U.N. troops are being deployed, and as the United States and European leaders issue more empty threats, the reality is that the indecisiveness and ineffectiveness of the West has invited the Serbs to step up their assaults. As of this week, two safe havens have fallen, a third is under siege, and in the past 4 days in Sarajevo, at least 20 people have been killed, while more than 100 people have been wounded. The U.N. mission has failed and has been declared more of a hindrance than a help by the Bosnian Prime Minister. The peace talks have failed because the Bosnian Serbs have determined that, judging by their recent military success, they have more to gain by fighting than by negotiating a peace settlement. The Bosnian Serbs already have control of 70 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina due in large part to a near monopoly of heavy weapons. This situation in Bosnia, particularly the ``dual key'' approach has eroded United States credibility and undermined NATO cohesion while contributing to the decline of the effectiveness of the U.N. peacekeepers. Mr. President, this is not a partisan issue, I am not blaming the Clinton administration, many of the problems with our policy in Bosnia began with the previous administration. This is a moral issue. The U.N. peacekeepers have not been able to achieve their mission. They are no longer capable of delivering humanitarian supplies to the enclaves, they are no longer capable of protecting the safe havens, and judging by the ease with which the peacekeepers have been killed and taken hostage, they are no longer capable of protecting themselves. Mr. President, this is not the fault of the troops in Bosnia. They were sent into a situation as noncombatants though they were seen as combatants by Serbs. UNPROFOR went to Bosnia to protect civilians, but they were never given the mandate, the equipment, or the rules of engagement to do the job. It was unconscionable to inject U.N. peacekeepers into a war where there is no peace to keep and without adequate means to defend themselves. The United Nations and NATO have been humiliated and weakened as Serb violations of U.N. resolutions were met with silence and empty promises. The arms embargo against Bosnia was adopted by the Security Council of the United Nations in 1991 when Yugoslavia was still intact. It was requested and supported by the then Government of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, the Milosevic government. It is a cruel twist of fate that the results of this arms embargo has hurt the very people who have been the victims of the war. This embargo has had no effect on the Bosnian Serbs who have inherited the powerful former Yugoslav army but has devastated the Bosnian Moslems. We can no longer stand by helplessly and watch as a country, recognized by the United Nations, is promised assistance that is too little, too late. Two days ago, Bosnian Serb leaders Karadzic and his military chief of staff, Ratko Mladic, were charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal. Mr. President, the world has recognized the atrocities of this tragic situation. Let us finally act to give the Bosnian Moslems the capacity to fight back and to defend themselves. Let us stop punishing these helpless civilians for the error of our policy.

Mr. SANTORUM

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

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the distinguished Presiding Officer.

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

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise to continue a forum that we started here as the 11 freshman Republican Members of the 104th Congress to talk about the issues that were important to us during the campaign that are now coming to the floor of the Senate and give a perspective of those who are more freshly from the hustings to the Senate and to the people listening. Today, the issue that we are going to discuss--and I know the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Missouri, has been an outstanding advocate in his short tenure in the Senate on this issue--is welfare reform. Senator Ashcroft served as the Governor of Missouri for 8 years and instituted welfare reform and has been a tremendous advocate for really dramatic reform in the States. Later today, Senator Ashcroft, along with Senator Gramm, Senator Grams, and others, is going to have a press conference to discuss a version that we are going to put forward which I believe, of all the bills that have been introduced to date, both in the House and the Senate, is probably the most dramatic, the most forward looking, the most flexible, and the most meaningful welfare reform package that has been put forward. When I say meaningful, I mean meaningful to the people who are in the welfare system or who may find themselves at some future time being caught in that net. We believe this is a dramatic departure from business as usual, and it is something I am very excited about. I have worked on the welfare reform issue as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and chaired the Republican task force last session of Congress to come up with a Republican welfare reform bill. We worked 9 or 10 months in extensive meetings and came up with a bill--it was included as part of the Contract With America--called the Personal Responsibility Act. That formed the basis of the bill that was eventually passed, H.R. 4, by the House, and what we have done really is take that product and taken it one step further and allowed more State flexibility, more local experimentation. One of the provisions that is in the bill that I am very proud of that the Senator from Missouri was the author of is a provision that says that community organizations, local community organizations, nonprofits, churches could actually be the welfare agency in a local community, really get back to what we know works. And what we know works in dealing with the problems of poverty are people who are in the community, who care about the people that they are serving, not someone hired from the State capital to monitor caseload, but someone who lives next door, who goes to the same church as the person who is going through the difficult time in their life. Those are the kinds of really dramatic reforms that are in the Gramm bill that we are going to be introducing today. And I am excited about it. I think it is a good mark. It shows where we want to be ultimately on the issue of welfare reform: Multiple block grants, some flexibility within those block grants to allow States to deal with emergencies or an increase in maybe the number of people who need nutritional assistance, so they can move from one fund to another maybe people-- there is an increasing surge in day care requirements. The same thing allows that kind of flexibility for the State to be able to move funds around from account to account. I think that is an important change. Again, the Senator from Missouri was the one that put forward these ideas. So I am excited about that bill. Let me say that I do not think that is where we are going to end up. That is where I would like to end up. So I am on the bill. That is where I would like to end up. That is where I would like to see somebody come down and say, this the way we should go, this is the dramatic step forward we should take. But just like the House where there were bills that were introduced that were more dramatic than was passed, H.R. 4, I think we will have to come up with a more modest approach if we are going to get the 60 votes required to pass a welfare reform bill in this body. And I am confident we can do that. I am, also, at the same time--having worked with Senator Ashcroft, Senator Gramm, and others, working with Senator Packwood, Senator Dole, and others--trying to come up with a bill that we can form that takes, hopefully, a lot from the Gramm bill, but reaches across to try to get Members who may have concern about providing too much State flexibility, too much local control and provide some sort of compromise that can get the required votes to pass this Chamber. I think this issue and the opportunity to make dramatic changes is here. And this issue is too important for us to hold out for the perfect solution. I think we need it out there as a goal. But at the same time I think we have to be practical and understand that we have to get what we can today. And if we can, as will be in the Packwood bill, also in the Gramm bill, is a block grant of the AFDC Program to allow States the flexibility to put forward their own plan for welfare recipients, to give them the opportunity to get into jobs, to get into job training, and put stiff work requirements, put a time limitation-- those kinds of things that we know work in getting people off the welfare dependency cycle back into the mainstream of American life. Those are the kinds of things that we need to say, ``States, do the innovation, do the work that is necessary for your individual States to be able to transition people off.'' We are going to give that flexibility, and in both bills. That is only a small piece of the welfare pie, AFDC, what many people, certainly a lot on the other side, consider to be welfare. I think welfare is a much broader category. They say AFDC is the welfare program, Aid to Families With Dependent Children. If we can block grant that program, end the entitlement nature, end the dependency that results from someone being guaranteed money for doing things that, frankly, most people would say are not what we want them to do: have children out of wedlock, do not get a job, do not get job training, do not try to do anything to get yourself out. We will give you more money. I think that is a very perverse incentive. End that entitlement. Say that after a certain period of years, you cannot continue in this life. That we will help you but you must help yourself. It is a contract between those who want to help and those who are to be helped. That piece alone, if we can block grant that piece, send it to the States, give them the opportunity, with a string that says you have a 5-year limitation, you have to have a work requirement; if we can do that piece alone, I think we will make a major change in the lives of millions of Americans and give them the opportunity that they have not seen under this system, which is intended to be compassionate but is nothing but destructive to millions of lives, families, and communities across America. We have that opportunity today. I think we can get 60 or more votes for that provision. We should go as far as we can. We should try to do more. We should do food stamp reforms. I would like to see a block grant for food stamps. I do not know if we can get a block grant for the Food Stamp Program. If we can get major reforms that came out of the Agriculture Committee that require work for people who are on food stamps, that get rid of a lot of the waste and fraud that encourage electronic benefits transfer, which is being used just north of here in Maryland and other places, in isolated programs, for example, in Berks County in Pennsylvania, using the debit card as opposed to a food stamp. It cuts down tremendously on fraud. We need to encourage that for States to be able to do more of that, to reduce the amount of food stamp fraud, which I know is a very sensitive issue among millions of Americans who see the fraud every day at the grocery store. Those are the kinds of things that we can and should debate here on this floor. And I am hopeful that we can bring a bill--I want to doff my cap to the majority leader for his courage in setting forth the last week of the session before the recess to do welfare reform so that we can come here and have a great debate before we get into the reconciliation process after we come back, but have a debate focused solely on the issue of welfare reform. Many have encouraged the majority leader to just fold welfare reform into reconciliation and consider it all one big package. I think that is a mistake. I do not think it gives welfare the kind of focus that it deserves in changing America. So I appreciate the opportunity to come here and talk about this. I want to again congratulate the Presiding Officer for his tremendous work on this issue. And I yield the floor. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, this morning the leader time is reserved and there will be a period of morning business until 9:45 a.m. At 9:45 the Senate will resume consideration of S. 343, the regulatory reform bill. Rollcall votes can be expected throughout today's session of the Senate and into the evening in order to make progress on the bill. Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I rise today to talk about two men; one is a Nazi doctor, the other is his pursuer. Before I get into that, I want to thank my father-in-law and my mother-in-law, Dr. Ken Garber and Betty Lee Garber, for bringing this matter to my attention. This is a painful subject to talk about for many, particularly as we look at what is going on in Bosnia and some of the ethnic cleansing that is happening there. We talk about Vietnam and our missing in action. Looking at history and digging up the past is not always a pleasant experience but one which I believe is absolutely necessary in this case and one that I come to the floor to talk about and will be on notice to come back to if it is necessary to talk about it again. The Nazi doctor I am going to talk about this morning is Dr. Hans Sewering. He is just not a normal doctor in Germany. This is a doctor who was the head of the German Medical Society for 17 years--17 years. He was a State senator in the State of Bavaria for 20 years, a very well-known person in Germany. How this came to the attention of his pursuer 2 years ago, Dr. Michael Franzblau from Marin County in California, was that Dr. Sewering was nominated, in fact elected, to become the president of the World Medical Association, the affiliate of the American Medical Association in the United States. It came to the attention of Dr. Franzblau that Dr. Sewering was accused of crimes during the Nazi reign. And who is Dr. Sewering? Dr. Sewering joined the SS in 1933. Nine months later, he joined the Nazi Party. When he graduated from medical school, he went to work in Munich at the tubercular clinic of Schoenbrunn near Dachau in 1932. During that time, under his administration, Dr. Franzblau, and other medical historians, are suggesting that he sent over 900 disabled children to a ``healing center''--a healing center--6 to 10 kilometers away, not far down the road, from the tubercular clinic that he ran. Over 900 children were sent to a healing center. What was this healing center? It was a euphemism for a ``killing center,'' where disabled children were deliberately starved and given barbiturates to kill them ``efficiently,'' with little cost to the state. The center was run by a Dr. Helmut Pramueller. Dr. Pramueller in 1949 was convicted by a German court. They found him guilty of murdering 6,000 children who were ``unfit'' because of their disabilities, which ranged from epilepsy to mild mental illnesses to physical disabilities. By the way, Dr. Pramueller, for killing 6,000 children in this ``healing center,'' was sentenced to 6 years in prison. He got 1 year off for good behavior. But Dr. Sewering was never prosecuted. The reason for that is that the evidence was not made available. In fact, the only evidence we have been able to ascertain through the work of Dr. Franzblau, and others, is one documented case of which Dr. Sewering sent a 12-year-old girl, Babette Frowiss, to the ``healing center'' from his tubercular clinic at the Schoenbrunn. We have the document, with his signature on it. It says: She is no longer suitable for Schoenbrunn. She will be sent to Egfling-Haar-- The name of this killing center-- the healing center. It was well known in Dachau, the vicinity of where these centers were, that this ``healing center'' was, in fact, a place where children were starved and killed ``efficiently.'' But nevertheless, we have that document, the origins of which we do not know. It has been authenticated as a real document, but we cannot find any other documents. In fact, the German Government will not make available any of these documents. Some even insist that they are not available or that they do not exist or, if they do, they just cannot find them. But in any case, they are not around, and the prosecutors in Munich that Dr. Franzblau is trying to get to prosecute this case refuse to look into it. Another curious angle to this question is four nuns. The tubercular clinic at Schoenbrunn where Dr. Sewering worked was run by Franciscan nuns, the Franciscan order. There were four nuns as of 2 years ago, when Dr. Sewering was nominated to presidency of the World Medical Association, who were there at the time. When Dr. Sewering was elected, and then withdrew his nomination in election, these four nuns issued a statement basically indicting Dr. Sewering and what went on at the clinic and at Egfling-Haar, at the healing center, the killing center. You might think that if you were the prosecutor in Munich who was concerned about sending children to their death by such a horrendous means that you would take the time to interview these nuns who released this statement. Well, the prosecutor has not done so. Despite protestations from Dr. Franzblau, and others, he has refused to interview them. He has refused to pursue the documents that can ultimately convict Dr. Sewering of his crimes. And Dr. Franzblau persists in his trips over there to get them to pay attention to this, but this is an uncomfortable thing to talk about, and this is a very powerful man in Germany. Seventeen years the head of the medical society and they have refused to go after him. Dr. Franzblau is taking matters into his own hands. On Friday, this will be published in the New York Times. The Friday morning New York Times will have this full-page advertisement. It says: We accuse the German State of Bavaria of harboring and protecting a war criminal. The German State of Bavaria has protected Dr. Hans Joachim Sewering for 50 years. Dr. Hans Joachim Sewering is accused of participating in the transfer of 900 German Catholic children from Schoenbrunn Sanitarium to a ``Healing Center'' at Egfling-Haar, where they died. Four nuns made this allegation in January 1993. They were eyewitnesses to these crimes and broke their vow of silence 50 years after the fact at the suggestion of the Bishop of Munich. [[Page S 9729]] Yes, they remained silent for 50 years, but after this man was elected to the World Medical Association presidency, they spoke up at the urging of the Bishop of Munich. Dr. Sewering, age 78, still practices medicine in Dachau. Dr. Sewering must be brought to the bar of justice now. The relatives of the murdered children ask for justice. The German people will be cleansed of this stain on their honor by the successful prosecution and conviction of Dr. Hans Joachim Sewering for murder and crimes against humanity. And they ask: If you believe, as we do, that Dr. Sewering should be brought to justice, please act now by faxing or writing to the German Consulate. . . At their number. I hope that Senators listening to this, if they believe as I believe that the German Government owes more diligence in pursuing this, that they sign on to a letter that I will be sending to the German Government asking them to find these documents and to interview these nuns so we can pursue this case. It is the least they can do. It is the least they can do for 900 children starved to death because of their disabilities. I come here to the U.S. Senate not casually. I know this is a very important place to make these kinds of statements, but this is an abomination. The children who were murdered deserve justice, their families deserve a full accounting, and Dr. Franzblau, 25 of whose relatives were incinerated in a synagogue in Poland, deserves the satisfaction of knowing that his efforts were not in vain. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I appreciate that. I assure the Senator that I will bring this matter before the chairman of the Budget Committee for his response to that. I am sure he has a response to that. What I will say is that we have put forth an honest effort, according to all the numbers that I have seen, that this does bring us to a balanced budget in 7 years, and it does so in the way that I think is really the only way possible to do it: By containing the growth of Government. Under this budget resolution, the Federal Government's budget continues to grow 3 percent a year. Growth is continuing in Government spending. It does not freeze. The spending goes up 3 percent a year. It does not go up as fast as it would had we not changed some of the things here in the budget. So I am excited about today. I think it is a great opportunity for us to do something for--I see some young people up in the audience--to do something for the next generation of Americans, and provide some rays of hope for them, that we are going to get our economic ship right and give them the opportunity for a successful economy so that they can seek their dreams and fulfill those dreams in a free and prosperous America. I thank the Senator from Wyoming. I see the Senator from Tennessee is here to speak on this issue. I would be happy to yield at this point to the Senator from Tennessee.