Jim Talent

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. I have had other bad experiences with them. It is kind of ironic they are moving forward on another site in my area, and I do not want them to, and now they say they will not move forward on something that is not even a site yet. I would say to the chairman, and I am sure he would share this, an objective study with a written analysis that is documented and circulated to the Members, I want to know the facts. I want to know what their opinion is on the outcome of legislation, however, a last minute phone call based on an admittedly ``quick and dirty study'' is out of bounds. I do not react well to that. I hear the gentleman, and I just wanted to let him know about it and to see if other people were subject to the same thing.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I would ask the gentleman from California if he would be kind enough to yield time to me for a little informal discussion here? Mr. Chairman, I wanted to say to the gentleman that something happened in my office, and I wanted to ask if this is happening to other Members, as far as he knew. My Washington office staff got a call late last night from one of the regional EPA staffers from my area saying they had done a quick and dirty study of the bill, and that was their words, quick and dirty study of the bill, in the superfund section of it, and they thought if the bill passed they would not be able to do cleanup on a site in my district. This is the night before the vote on the bill. I took it, at best, as an attempt to lobby me, and, at worst, an attempt to threaten me, and I wanted to know if this had been happening to any other Members, as far as you know, and what is going on about it?

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his fine work in this area. amendment no. 66 offered by mr. stokes

Mr. TALENT. That is right. The site they mentioned, as far as I know, is not listed as a site yet, but the staffer said this was done on the basis of a quick and dirt study. When my staff pressed her on it, she said she is a foot soldier and that this is headquarters telling them to do this.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in recognition of the outstanding work of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis. In conjunction with BJC Health System and Washington University School of Medicine, the hospital will be honored in a White House Ceremony today. It is being awarded a multiyear humanitarian grant to work with health care facilities in Riga, Latvia. The St. Louis health professionals will be working with three hospitals including Riga's State Hospital for Children, as well as the maternity and local jewish hospitals. Working to improve the quality and delivery of health care, the St. Louis mission will lend its expertise to a community that needs guidance modernizing medical techniques and privatizing its healthcare system. The staff of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis is reaching across geographical, linguistic and ideological barriers to help those who need it most, the children and the infirm. It is my pleasure to be able to express our gratitude for the work of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis which has healed so many lives at home and will now heal many lives around the world.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate a young constituent, Philip Emery Scherry, upon his receipt of the Eagle Scout Award at the National Court of Honor on June 20, 1995. While only 15 years old, Philip has many accomplishments. He is a junior at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis. He was a Cub Scout with Pack 361 for 3 years where he earned the distinguished Arrow of Light. He then became a member of Troop 361, St. Mary Magdalene, Brentwood, MO, for 6 years. Some of his leadership positions include assistant patrol leader, assistant senior patrol leader, troop guide, quartermaster, and senior patrol leader. He was elected to the Order of the Arrow by the Scouts of his troop and selected for Junior Leader Training Camp. In order to receive the Eagle Scout Award, Philip Scherry has donated over 600 hours of service to his troop and his community. Some of his service projects include the Scouting for Food, Christmas toy drives for St. Louis city children, the kickoff for a Brentwood city-wide recycling program, two city creek cleanups, tree planting for the Missouri Botanical Gardens, building park benches for Brentwood Parks and Recreation, and reconstructing playground areas for local schools. For his Eagle Service Project, Philip built a picnic shelter/viewing area for the Wabash Frisco & Pacific Model Railroad. This shelter provides a safe viewing area for visitors to watch the live steam railroad crews working the trains and turnaround. Service projects are not Philip's only accomplishments. He has traveled to the National Scouting Museum in Murray, KY. He was also a member of the troop contingent to the 1993 National Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill, VA, as well as attending the 50th anniversary celebration of Lincoln Day in Springfield, IL. Finally, Philip is a member of the 1995 troop contingent to the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. Philip Scherry embodies the volunteerism and community commitment that is so vital to the spirit of our Nation. His dedication as a member of the Eagle Scouts will be remembered long after June 20. I therefore want to take this opportunity to congratulate Philip and his parents Ed and Sandy Scherry on his achievements. Mr. Speaker, it is truly an honor to represent them.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer my congratulations to Jim Henry, a constituent of mine who was recently awarded the Small Business Administration's ``1995 Small Business Person of the Year'' award for the State of Missouri. Ten years ago Mr. Henry left his job with Emerson Electric and bought R.C. Wilson Co., a small collection agency in St. Louis, Missouri. At the time Mr. Henry bought R.C. Wilson he had no small business experience or background, but he did have a can-do philosophy, which has helped him build one of the most successful collection companies in out city. Over the past ten years, sales, employment and clientele at R.C. Wilson have grown significantly. Sales have increased by 200 percent, while employment at R.C. Wilson have grown from 25 to 118. At the same time, his company's collection success rate is over 30 percent--higher than the 22 percent average for the industry. Mr. Henry explains his success this way: ``The way a business owner treats employees makes or breaks a business. The key to long-term success is to treat your employees with dignity and always maintain the highest level of integrity and honesty in all dealings.'' This attitude is reflected in the companies employee benefit policies. R.C. Wilson Co. has a generous tuition reimbursement program which enables many employees to continue their education through post-graduate levels. The company also provides an annual scholarship for Missouri Business Week to the child of one employee. The company also shares profits with its employees. Mr. Speaker, I want to close by again offering Mr. Henry my congratulations on being named the 1995 Missouri Small Business Person of the Year, and to wish him and the employees of R.C. Wilson Co. continued success.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer my congratulations to Jim Henry, a constituent of mine who was recently awarded the Small Business Administration's ``1995 Small Business Person of the Year'' award for the State of Missouri. Ten years ago Mr. Henry left his job with Emerson Electric and bought R.C. Wilson Co., a small collection agency in St. Louis, MO. At the time Mr. Henry bought R.C. Wilson he had no small business experience or background, but he did have a can-do philosophy, which has helped him build one of the most successful collection companies in our city. Over the past 10 years, sales, employment, and clientele at R.C. Wilson have grown significantly. Sales have increased by 200 percent, while employment at R.C. Wilson have grown from 25 to 118. At the same time, his company's collection success rate is over 30 percent--higher than the 22 percent average for the industry. Mr. Henry explains his success this way: ``The way a business owner treats employees makes or breaks a business. The key to long-term success is to treat your employees with dignity and always maintain the highest level of integrity and honesty in all dealings.'' This attitude is reflected in the companies employee benefit policies. R.C. Wilson Co. has a generous tuition reimbursement program which enables many employees to continue their education through post-graduate levels. The company also provides an annual scholarship for Missouri Business Week to the child of one employee. The company also shares profits with its employees. Mr. Speaker, I want to close by again offering Mr. Henry my congratulations on being named the 1995 Missouri Small Business Person of the Year, and to wish him and the employees of R.C. Wilson Co. continued success.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Mrs. Elizabeth Rauch, a resident of St. Charles, MO, who on March 11, 1995, was honored by Youth in Need as their 1995 Celebration of Youth Honoree. Elizabeth Rauch has faithfully served her community, and her outstanding leadership abilities have contributed to the continued growth and development of her community. She has dedicated her time as an active participant in countless community efforts to assist the young people of St. Charles. Mrs. Rauch serves as a member of the Lindenwood College Board of Directors and as chairwoman of the Academy of the Sacred Heart Board of Trustees Endowment Fund. She has also been appointed to a 4-year term on the Archdiocesan Development Appeal Council. Elizabeth Rauch promotes many civic and charitable groups. She supports such noble causes as the Academy of the Sacred Heart Mother's Club, American Red Cross Junior Program, St. Joseph's Hospital, Alliance for Regional Community Health, United Way of St. Charles, Meals on Wheels, Salvation Army, and St. Charles Historical Society. Elizabeth Rauch is a role model for community service, and in fact the St. Charles Chamber of Commerce recognized her dedication and leadership by awarding her its Humanitarian Award in 1984. She is indeed an inspiration to us all, and is rightfully honored for her continued service as Youth in Need's 1995 Celebration of Youth Honoree. Mr. Speaker, I commend Elizabeth Rauch on this outstanding achievement and wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Let us look at what the Republican bill actually does. It actually requires actual people actually on the welfare case load to work; 2,225,000 people by the beginning of the next decade will have to work under the Republican bill. And it is work as the American people understand work, working at a job. Let us look at what the Deal bill has. It has job search. It has education and training. It has personal employability plans. Where have we seen that before? In the 1988 welfare bill, which was also called a workfare bill. Do you know how many people are working now that we have had the 1988 bill for 6 years, 26,000 people out of 4\1/2\ million people are working. That is how many people are going to be working under the Deal bill. It is the same old wine and it is not even in new bottles. It is the same old wine in the same old bottles. We are taxing middle-class Americans. We are pouring the money into billions and billions of dollars worth of new bureaucracies, personal employability plans, education and training. No where does the bill define work as work, and nobody will be working. The bill does nothing about illegitimacy. It allows the illegitimacy rate to continue to grow. It creates new bureaucracies instead of requiring work. It maintains the Federal lock hold on the welfare system. It is the kind of welfare reform that we have had in the past. Mr. Chairman, it proves that we need not just to end welfare as we know it, we need to end welfare reform as we know it. Vote for the Republican welfare bill and against the Deal substitute.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. It is my intention to be on the floor for this debate as much as possible. I have been listening to the procedural sparring. I heard the gentlewoman from Illinois debate basically the merits of the bill, and I wanted to be able to respond to her points without regard to the procedural sparring that is going on. I have a few minutes to do it, and I appreciate the gentleman's yielding this time to me for that purpose. Mr. Speaker, I think what we are going to consider here today is an important piece of legislation. It is a bill that is designed to replace the existing failed welfare system with a system that is based on principles that work, time-honored principles that have helped people out of poverty and into self-sufficiency--work, family responsibility, marriage, all the things that the existing system has been running down for so long. What we have done in the last 30 years can really be summarized in this way: We have spent close to $5 trillion on the Federal and State level on means-tested entitlement programs, welfare programs in the broadest sense, and what we have gotten is not a reduction in poverty. In fact, Mr. Speaker, it is important to understand that poverty went down steadily in the post-war era until 1965, until the Great Society began. In that period, welfare spending has gone up tenfold, and the poverty rate, if anything, has increased slightly. Certainly it has not gone down. What we have gotten for all that spending and what we have gotten for all that effort is an explosion in the out-of-wedlock birth rate. It is now one out of three. One out of three kids in the United States is born out of wedlock. In 1965 it was between 6 and 7 percent. We have gotten a sixfold increase in the out-of-wedlock birth rate. What does the bill do about it? As I said before, the emphasis or the basis of the welfare system is on work, on family, on responsibility. The first thing we do is, we are no longer going to pay cash benefits to teen moms under the age of 18. It is stupid, Mr. Speaker, to send a check of $300 or $400 every month to a young mom and leave her in the environment in which she is probably being exploited and with which she certainly is not coping. Instead, we give the money to the States and we say, ``Care for those families, but do it in a way that encourages family, that encourages work.'' There are a lot of alternatives the States will be able to choose, the kind of alternatives that have worked over the centuries in welfare systems--supervised settings like maternal group homes and adoption. These kinds of things will work out. They will lift people out of poverty instead of miring them in it. The bill has very strong work provisions, and there are amendments to make those provisions stronger because work is an important part of dignity. It is an important part of making welfare a two-way street. If you do a work program properly, Mr. Speaker, it serves several goals. First of all, it enables you to determine who does not really need welfare, in a nonbureaucratic way, because if you have got to work 30 or 35 hours a week picking up trash from the side of a highway or doing a job like that and you have other alternatives, you will get off welfare. It is important that we target the work provisions on that part of the welfare population which is most employable. The bill does that. The bill also has an overall goal of breaking the locked grip of Washington bureaucrats on the welfare system and returning it back to the people. It is not a question of trusting the States; it is a question of trusting the American people. Put the control over power and resources closer to them, and they will adapt the welfare system to really care for the needy neighbors and needy people amongst them. I want to address very briefly arguments that we have heard and we are this bill. People say that we are cutting welfare spending. We are not cutting welfare spending. When this bill is finished, the spending on the welfare state, the Federal commitment to means-tested welfare programs will grow by about the rate of inflation every year. What we are doing is abandoning Federal control, the Federal locked grip over this system, and returning that to the people, and we are rebasing this system on principles that will really work. Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill. I want to close by saying this: This bill is, I think, going to be developed along the following lines: We are trying to talk about what this bill is going to do, about the very basic, fundamental problems with the existing system that are just insurmountable. And everybody agrees the existing system is a total failure. The President of the United States said we have to end welfare as we know it. Did anybody say, ``No, let's continue welfare as we know it? We like welfare as we know it''?

Mr. TALENT. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to address that point, and then I will close my remarks. It is described by nobody else who is pro-life in that fashion, if I may say this to the gentleman. None of the other pro-life groups believe the language will have that effect. Let us see what the language does. It says that the States get a little extra bonus in the block grant if they reduce illegitimacy without a proportionate increase in abortion. Now, for every increase in abortion that you have, it moves you backward in your attempt to get the money. This is for the first time in the Federal statutes that we have a formula which discourages both illegitimacy and abortion. That is why the gentleman from California [Mr. Stark], who offered an amendment to take it out, said that the formula we have in the bill is a bounty on abortion. That is how he described it in the Congressional Daily today, because it does discourage abortion, and everybody else who is pro-life thinks that. I have a difference of opinion with some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle. I do not know how a provision can not be pro-life if it says to the States that you get extra money for reducing illegitimacy but not if you do it by increasing abortion. So I would just say that to the gentleman. Let me close my remarks by saying this: The debate is going to be on the one hand those who support this bill, and I think you will find Members on both sides ending up voting for it, trying to say what we are doing with this bill to rebase this failed system on marriage and work and family; and then people on the other side basically saying, nope, if we do not continue doing it the way we have been doing it or maybe expanding the existing welfare state without changing any of the incentives, we are abandoning the poor. Have the faith to believe that we can help people without destroying their families. We can have a welfare system that helps people without destroying their families and their incentive to work and to be responsible. That is what we are trying to do. I would urge all Members, we all know the existing system is failing. If you cannot lead in the effort to change it, at least follow. Or, if you cannot do that, at least get out of the way. Do not perpetuate the myth that if we do not keep doing it the way we have been doing it, which nobody likes, that somehow we cannot fundamentally change the system at all.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, pursuant to the rule, I offer amendment numbered 3, printed in House Report 104-85.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his generosity. Mr. Chairman, let us define what we are talking about here and what this amendment does. We are talking about people who are receiving the range of welfare benefits, cash, food stamps, Medicaid, maybe subsidized housing, a package of benefits worth conservatively about $10,000 a year. That means if they have to work under the hours this bill requires, they will be working for between $6.50 an hour and $9.00 an hour. There are a whole lot of Americans doing that. What the bill says is if you are on welfare for 2 years, if you do not have a young child at home that requires day-care and you are able- bodied, you have got to work. And what we are dealing with here again is a difference of visions, because some people here think that is a punitive. I think that is the way out of welfare. Here is what the amendment does not do. It does not do what the 1988 bill does and what most work provisions purport to do. People say we need to provide a job. What that really means is we need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars trying to train somebody to be a vice president. What we need to do is just provide work. Work is available for people. It does not provide day-care for people. We focus on people that do not need day-care. That does not increase the cost of the bill by billions of dollars. We have heard from the other side the Republican bill is weak on work. If you want to strengthen the bill on work, and I do, vote for this amendment, because it is going to require that people work. It is not going to cost billions of dollars. It will save money, move people off welfare, and mean that when people are on welfare they are getting a paycheck and their kids are seeing them get a paycheck. That is what this bill is about; work, responsibility, and family.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, I say to the gentlewoman, ``Lady, that's the second time I've heard that. The average welfare package is worth, AFDC, Medicaid, food stamps, et cetera, about 8 to $15,000 a year. Now let's suppose it's in the low end, about $10,000 a year. The work participation requirements in this bill mean, if you're working for that, you're getting paid about $6\1/2\ an hour, not 60 cents an hour.''

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman certainly for the tone of his comments. Let me just address his remarks. With regard to CBO, they were referring to the two-parent aspect of this. I would simply say that Utah has had strict work programs in the past focused on two-parent AFDC families. Not only do they work, but we find very large percentages of those families get off welfare because they are able to go into work. The gentleman says it is unenforceable, it sets limits that the States have to meet. It is the underlying bill, which is three sentences, and just says basically that States have to have everybody working in 2 years that I suggest is not going to work. The gentleman says that we are federalizing this whole system. We are settling targets that States have to meet and then allowing them to meet it in any way that they see fit. That is not federalizing. That is consistent with the rest of the bill. The gentleman says it is very costly. My whole point was it is costly if we focus work on single moms with infant kids. Then we have to pay for day care. I say, If you abstract a day care component of work, work is very affordable. In fact, I've talked with Governors who say it saves them money because it moves people off to welfare, which is supposed to be the point. Finally the gentleman makes a good point with regard to moms with younger kids. We are not prohibiting the States from trying to help those moms find work. We are just saying in terms of what we are requiring to focus on the families that are closest to employability. I say, Sure, if you can find a mom with an infant kid who is close to work, yes, by all means help her. We're not prohibiting the States from doing that, but we're trying to shift the focus away, to other families which are closer to work. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Hutchinson].

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to say that this bill only requires people on--applies to people on AFDC, which means they are eligible for Medicaid, eligible for food stamps. They are getting a package of benefits worth $8,000 to $15,000 a year. The work requirements would mean in effect they are paid about 6\1/2\ to $7 an hour----

Mr. TALENT. I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Levin] if he needs the time. My response is going to take longer than 30 seconds. If the gentleman wanted to finish up his remarks----

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes so that I may explain my amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment strengthens the 2 years and work requirement in the underlying bill and it strengthens it in two very important respects. I would like to lay those before the House. The underlying bill requires that the States have plans to make everybody on welfare work in 2 years, but it does not define work nor does it give the States any direction as to what that would entail. It needs changing and strengthening in two respects. In the first place, Mr. Chairman, it is very important that when we have work requirements we be up front about what works means. Work means work. It should not mean cart blanche job searching, it should not mean carte blanch education or training. Those are not work. The advantage of work is--there are several advantages to it. One of the chief advantages of it is that people on welfare are working in return for the welfare. It makes welfare a two-way street. My amendment defines work and harmonizes that with the definitions already in the bill, definitions that relate to the sections about required work participation as far as the States are concerned. Those sections have been strengthened also, or will be strengthened if the House ends up approving the en bloc amendments. So what the amendment does is it defines work as work. So when we say people are working, they are actually working. The second thing that the amendment does which is equally important-- and we discussed this before in the debate on the en bloc amendments-- it focuses the work requirements on people who are closest to employability. It says the two year-and-out provisions apply specifically to two parent AFDC families. About 10 percent of the caseload consists of families where both parents are at home. One of those families--one of these parents should be working and can be working. And the amendment requires high percentages of those families work. The second set of families that the amendment focuses on, single parents with kids school age or older: The advantages of focusing on those families are severalfold: First of all, since they are the closest to employability, the burden of work is easiest on them in the short term. It is much easier for them to go out and work. In the second place, when the experience of the State shows when you focus work requirements on those families, work becomes a very effective tool for determining who needs welfare and who does not. It is a nonbureaucratic, nonhumiliating tool for determining who is closest to being in the private sector and off welfare. Mr. Chairman, States that have experimented with these models have shown when you have real work requirements for those families and have work built into it, they get off welfare rolls. It is reducing the welfare rolls and putting those people to work, which is what we should be trying to do. There are several advantages to this. It is also much less expensive. We heard talk this evening about work being expensive. It is expensive if you are focusing on single parents with infant kids because they cannot work without day care and probably without extensive training and education, and work does cost an awful lot of money. Work becomes then an excuse for expanding the welfare state, programs that we tried and failed, and it ends up being that nobody is working. Nobody works. Now sometimes the States spend a lot of money, sometimes they do not, but nobody works. So what this amendment will do is harmonize this portion of the work provision in the bill with the other portion of the work provision in the bill and will make an honest work requirement. We know that these people can work, the States have worked in this kind of field, and I have had good success, it is less expensive, and it is really a way of shifting the system to one that relies on work rather than on dependency. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TALENT. I would say this to the gentleman, and I appreciate his work in this area. Work is not expensive if you focus on people who are close to employability. It is expensive if you have huge day care requirements, if work is used as an excuse for vast new expansions of the welfare state, training, day care, et cetera. But if you focus on, say, two-parent families, then you do not need day care. And there are States which are doing----

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. TALENT. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, what this debate is revealing is the fundamental underlying difference of visions about what we need to do in this country to care for the poor. Let me just say very briefly before I talk about my two amendments in the en bloc, 30 years ago, the Federal Government basically preempted the field of welfare. Took it over. In doing that conditioned the receipt of assistance on people doing things which undermined the values that are necessary to lift people out of poverty. Conditioned assistance on people first and foremost having a child without being married. Punished people if they worked, because the size and the incentives in the welfare package became such that it was more attractive financially. It was rational in the short term for people not to work and to receive welfare. These facts, I do not think, are disputed. Everybody has said. The President has said these things. The Federal Government progressively took over control. Took the welfare system in a lock grip and has maintained it ever since. As a result, Mr. Chairman, poverty has not gone down in the last 30 years. It was declining for the 20 years before then. It has gone up slightly. That is not for want of the taxpayers trying. We have spent, depending on how you define welfare, at least trillions of dollars on welfare. It is not owing to a lack of generosity in the American people of either party. It is owing to a people material wealth and lift them out of poverty, is luring them into a kind of spiritual poverty by destroying their families and their incentives to work. That is what this bill is designed to change. I think everybody here wants to do that. Let's take the en bloc amendments we are talking about as far as illegitimacy is concerned. Yes, I put an amendment in here which is on the en bloc, it is a sense of Congress, it says the out-of-wedlock birth rate is one out of three and that is leading to an awful lot of terrible social pathologies, drug use, alienation crime. We cannot do anything about that unless we reduce the out-of-wedlock birth rate. I do not know a sociologist who disagrees with it. I have an amendment in here which increase work participation requirements. But the bill is focused on people who are closest to employability, two-parent AFDC families, single parents with kids school age or older. If you are able-bodied and your child is at school or you have another parent at home, there is no reason you cannot work. That is not punitive. That is good for you. If you work, you will be able to get off the welfare rolls. That is good. The other thing the bill does broadly is it takes control away from the Federal Government and returns it, not to the States but closer to the people of the United States. That is what the bill expresses trust in. It says the people of the United States if they have control over this system will do a much better job of providing for the needy amongst them than the Federal Government has done. It is a conflict in visions here. I understand people who sincerely, deeply believe in the existing system, but it is not working.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, Josef Stalin said, ``The death of a million men is a statistic. The death of one man is a tragedy.'' Let us talk about the death, then, of one boy, Eric Morse. In 1994 Eric lived in a public housing project in Chicago, which is where he was raised. He was a good boy. Two older boys tried to get him to steal candy, and he refused to do it. So they took him up to a 14th floor window in the public housing project, and they threw him out, despite his screams and the screams of his brother. Mr. Speaker, there were no dads there to help. There was nobody there to put a stop to it. And the reason is that our welfare system has over the last generation systematically destroyed the families and the incentives of low-income Americans. Probably in Eric's neighborhood, 4 out of 5 of the kids born each year are born out of wedlock. Mr. Speaker, we do not have to do that. Do not believe people who suggest that our choice is between this existing system, which is an engine of destruction for the families and the opportunity of the poor, and doing nothing. We can help them with a system that is based on work and family and responsibility. What Americans have always believed in. That is what this bill is about. That is what we are trying to do. I hope every Member of the House will put partisanship aside and consider supporting it.