Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I would like an opportunity to respond to both of my colleagues for a moment, and then I would ask my colleague from Alabama, when he was speaking--at some period of time, I thought I was going to do another amendment. But I will leave for a while and come back later.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Reserving the right to object. I am going to object just for a second because I actually was involved in another discussion. What was the request, again?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I object. I object.

Mr. WELLSTONE. There is. I object. I would like to see the amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am going to.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I have an idea it will take me a while to make the case, because I think it is pretty darn important. So I can't say 10 minutes, 5 minutes. I will not go on all afternoon. The Senator from Utah knows me. In very good faith, I have a statement to make and I will finish the statement. I will probably do it sooner if my colleague doesn't keep asking me when I will be done. I think I will be done within the next 20 minutes or so, not much longer.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield for a question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will send an amendment to the desk shortly. I appreciate my colleague's heartfelt words. Again, I hope we will have a thorough debate about this legislation. I think there are some kids who commit really violent crimes, and they should be held accountable. I want to say this very carefully to my colleague from Colorado, who is now in the Chair. From my own part, given what the Senator from Colorado has been through, and what his State has been through--I have said it before and I will say it again--I don't want to make any one- to-one correlation. I still very honestly and truthfully believe that every once in a while there is an act of violence that is such a nightmare, so God awful, it is so crazy, it is so sick, it is so incomprehensible that all of us should be very careful about doing any one-to-one correlation. I think there are many things we can do better in our country to reduce violence in the lives of children and in our communities. But I don't want my remarks to be correlated at least 100 percent to what happened at Columbine High School. I am not comfortable doing that. Mr. President, where I would disagree with my colleague from Utah-- this is why I was on the floor earlier; this is why I have been waiting patiently for days to become involved in this debate--is that again we need to understand that the vast majority of kids--I think over 90 percent of kids, as I read the statistic earlier--who are in these juvenile correctional facilities haven't committed a violent crime. If this is juvenile justice legislation, then we ought to be talking about justice. I will say one more time that a lot of these ``correctional facilities'' don't correct, and that a lot of these kids, by the time they leave these facilities, are not on their way toward productive citizenship. These places basically become kind of a staging ground for them moving on to committing more crime and winding up in prison. That is one of the major flaws of this legislation. If you do not look at this disproportionate minority confinement, and you want to sort of take us backward so that States no longer can really do a careful assessment of what is going on when so many of the kids who are winding up in prison are kids of color, not only is this not right, not only is this a matter of discrimination, not only should we not be allowing States and encouraging States to take a look at this, quite often when those kids leave, they are far worse off than when they got there. I have talked about just this one visit to the Tallulah facility. I am sorry to pick on the facility, but I will tell you the truth--most of these kids, about 80 percent of them, are African American, as young as age 11, and 95 percent have committed nonviolent crimes. I have done a lot of community organizing and a lot of low-income neighborhood work in my life. I probably would have been willing--I did a lot of work with young people before I came to the Senate. I still try to do that work. I would have been pleased to meet with any of them at 10 o'clock at night but not all of them, not after they were in Tallulah, not after they were in the facility. I will not support a piece of legislation that doesn't deal with the disproportionate sentences of kids of color, or any piece of legislation that takes us backward, that really calls on us to turn our gaze away from this, any piece of legislation that allows, albeit incidental, contact between these kids and adults in some of these facilities, with, God knows, what consequences. I cannot support a piece of legislation that doesn't do better. I am hoping we can have some agreement on mental health services so that a lot of kids who should not be in these institutions who never committed a violent crime, can get treatment in their own communities as opposed to being incarcerated, or making sure if they are incarcerated, for God's sake, that they get treatment. Any piece of legislation that doesn't allow States to use the funding for that, or doesn't have explicit direction that States can use that funding is short on the justice part. Let me also say, although this is not today's topic but it is related, the fact is we can build a million new prisons and we can fill all of them. We are never going to stop this cycle of violence in this country unless many more children in this country have hope. When we have, roughly speaking, close to one out of every four kids under the age of six growing up poor in America, and close to 60 percent of kids of color growing up poor in America, we have a whole agenda to deal with here. Nobody should dismiss that agenda. The amendment I am going to be sending to the desk speaks directly to what my colleague from Utah was talking about. This is the 100,000 school counselors amendment. The tragic school shootings in Littleton, CO--again, I don't want to do any one-to-one correlation; I don't want to be glib about this, but it certainly shows that we must do better by way of making sure that kids who have some fear problems are identified. There has to be a lot more infrastructure in our schools so we can do a better job of maybe seeing what could happen and getting to these kids earlier. There are no easy answers. There is no simple solution to the problem of school violence, but there are some steps we can take to make our schools safer and healthier. I want to talk about expanding and improving the available mental health services in our Nation's schools as an essential step forward. For this reason, I rise to offer this amendment, the 100,000 school counselors amendment, to S. 254. For months I have been receiving letters and calls--and I imagine other Senators have as well--from my constituents in Minnesota who have been asking for my help to find a way to get students the mental health services they desperately need. They call and ask, Is there a way we can hire more counselors to serve our schools in the State of Minnesota? I have a whole stack of letters I could hold up. Let me read from a few of them. Betty Jo Braun, a school counselor from Cleveland public schools, a small town in Minnesota: In my 15 years as a counselor, I observe younger and younger students who feel that their only recourse is to repay violence with violence. If I could somehow get to all of them with violence prevention at an early age, we might have a better chance with positive outcomes in High School. But not at 767 students to 1 counselor unless overworked teachers do all the work and all I do is consult. The violent incidents that frighten me most are not the ones that I manage to avert (fights, suicide attempts, etc.); the scary ones are the ones I don't know about and that are waiting like the other shoe to drop into our mostly calm rural life, as they did in a neighboring school not too long ago. There a young man came into the school with a pistol and managed to shoot a police officer before being apprehended. Somehow I believe that a good school counselor with his ear to the ground could have avoided this incident by intervening with this young man along the way. Unfortunately, this district has a 1000 to 0 student to counselor ratio; they cut both counseling positions the year before this incident occurred. There are schools all across this country that cry out for an infrastructure of counselors to be able to provide more support for kids who really need this additional help. Across the country, counseling positions are being cut. It is incumbent upon the Federal Government, if we are going to talk about how we respond to some of the violence that has taken place in our schools across the country, to share in this responsibility to hire more counseling and mental health professionals. Schools vary greatly in their support for counseling services. Due to current incentives under Federal law, schools often place a higher priority on the hiring of additional instructional staff than on the establishment of even modest counseling programs. Up until recently-- maybe the world has changed since Colorado, but up until very recently the whole idea of school counselors was that counselors were like icing on the cake; they weren't part of the cake; they were not that essential to what goes on in schools. Well, they are. The letter continues: We must make it affordable for schools to hire counselors, school social workers and school psychologists. My State of Minnesota prides itself on being a great education State, but we fail those students who are in most need of our help because Minnesota has one of the worst counselor-to-student ratios in the country. California is dead last. Minnesota's student-to-counselor ratio is 1,011 to 1.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleague I respond in three ways: No. 1, while I, honestly and truthfully, this legislation is deeply flawed, there are some good things in this legislation and I know my colleague has worked hard on it. I appreciate his comments about ways in which we can do a better job on the upfront assessment for kids struggling with mental illness, some of whom probably really would be better off treated not in these facilities. I appreciate what my colleague has said. Everything my colleague listed is important. However, in my statement I will go into some of the training that is necessary for counselors. I am talking about an infrastructure in schools, specifically in the schools, and I am talking about an infrastructure that includes counselors, that includes social workers, and includes school psychologists. The reason I am talking about 100,000 counselors and we are talking about a cost that becomes one-third Federal Government, one-third State, and one-third school district, I say to my colleague from Alabama we have a ratio--and I am talking about my own State--in Minnesota we have a student-counselor ratio of 1,000-1. The truth of the matter is, we have to do a better job. I think the Federal Government can be a player. I understand this is not a substitute for what my colleague has talked about, but I want there to be a very specific focus on the need to have counselors and to have social workers and clinical psychologists in our schools. That is the amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield for a question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I will be pleased to yield for a question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleagues that this 100,000 school counselors amendment, very much patterned after the COPS program, is focused on an area where we can make a huge difference. We do not have the counselors. We do not have the social workers. We do not have the school psychologists. We do not have the infrastructure of support for our kids. We can do much better, and it is absolutely essential that the Federal Government and we in the Senate step up to the plate and authorize this. Ultimately, I see this as a one-third, one-third, one- third matching program in terms of where the funding comes from. I do not see how we can be talking about juvenile justice and how we can be talking about preventing the violence and how we can be talking about, as so many have, what happened in Columbine High School or, for that matter, other high schools in the country. Different people have talked about different things. Some people have focused on more gun control. Some people have talked about tougher sentencing. Some people have talked about the problem of the culture of violence in our country. Some people have talked about the problem of what we see on TV and what we see in the movies. Some people have talked about the lack of spirituality in homes and the lack of spirituality in schools. And some people have talked about other issues as well. Quite frankly, I agree with most of this discussion. My own work has been in the mental health area. But I am telling you that we have to get serious about having an infrastructure of support in our schools that can make all the difference in the world for kids and can also help teachers deal with some kids who are not so easy to deal with, who can be very difficult to deal with. We have for too long viewed mental health services--I will say this one more time--as an extra, as being just a frill, as not being that important, as being icing on the cake. My prediction is--why don't we get ahead of the curve in the Senate--we are going to see a whole lot of schools and a whole lot of school districts saying we need more help. We are going to see young women and young men, and not so young women and men, going to schools, getting their degrees in counseling and going into this work. I say, great, let's encourage that; it can only help. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Am I understanding the Senator correctly that he does not think there is any connection between counseling support for kids who are having trouble in school and whether or not they might end up in a juvenile corrections facility?

Mr. WELLSTONE. OK. That is good, then.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Reserving the right to object, I want to point out I don't know whether this has been cleared with the minority leader. Speaking as a Democrat, I want to say to the majority leader that I think altogether we have been on this bill 3\1/2\ days. We have a finite list of amendments that we have locked in. We have not been dilatory. I, myself, was out on this floor, as my good friend from Utah can testify, all last week waiting, all today. I enjoy my colleague from Alabama, but the last hour or so were questions to me and what he had to say, which was important. I have been waiting for other amendments. So in all due respect, I don't think what the majority leader has said is quite accurate. We have substantive amendments, a finite list, locked in, which speak to this bill, which could improve this bill and deliver. To protect the Democrats, I object.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, before going forward with this amendment, there are two statements which I think need to be made for the record. One is, I say to both my colleagues on the other side of the aisle because I did not get a chance to respond earlier, there is no evidence whatsoever, as suggested by my colleague from Alabama, that there are Senators on this side who are trying to kill the bill. Nobody has filibustered. Believe me, I know how to filibuster and so do other people. Nobody has filibustered. We have agreed to a finite group of amendments. As to what the majority leader said as to the practical suggestion, we should handle this bill like we do any bill, which is we plow through amendments. That is the practical suggestion. I have not been here as long as my colleague from Utah, but I am sure he can recall many more examples than I can of a bill of this importance that has been on the floor and has taken a week, sometimes taken 2 weeks. Senators have amendments. We debate amendments. We vote them up or down. That is the Senate. That is how we conduct our work. In all due respect, it is not credible if the majority leader wants to pull the bill and he wants to find a pretext for pulling the bill. He can come out here and make this claim, but it is not credible.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I will yield for a question in a moment. Again, let me be clear. Many of us have been waiting to offer amendments. We have a finite list of amendments. We are going through the amendments. That is how we do business in the Senate. That is how we complete this bill. You do not have somebody--now I am not speaking for the party, I am speaking for myself--you do not have somebody come out here and basically say: You agree to do the amendments you have in a short of period of time; we will give you one more day, that's it, because this is a great bill, this is really important, and we have to pass it tomorrow. It may be a great bill, but some of us have disagreements with portions of this bill. My colleague from Mississippi talked about what happened last night in D.C. Two kids are going to be tried as adults. That is done locally. They did not wait for this bill to be passed. I can give examples of kids struggling with mental illness who have died in some of these juvenile correction centers, and I want to see something done to protect them. I feel as strongly about that as the majority leader feels about other provisions.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I yield for a question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague from Utah, I apologize for smiling. I was only smiling because initially I yielded for a question. I know him well enough to know, if he feels strongly about something, he is going to go on for a while. I appreciate what he said. Madam President, I do not ever have a problem yielding to Senator Hatch for a question or comment because he is always gracious as a Senator. We will get to the substantive debate, but I have to say for the record that if the majority leader wants to pull this bill because he does not agree with some of the amendments that have been adopted or he does not want to debate some of the other amendments that deal with gun control or other controversial amendments, he can pull the bill. So be it. You cannot have it both ways. As the old Yiddish proverb says: You can't dance at two weddings at the same time. You cannot say this is an incredibly important piece of legislation to deal with violence; it is so important in taking steps on prevention and stricter law enforcement with children, and then all of a sudden say: We are done as of tomorrow evening; if not, I will pull the bill. It does not work that way. If we come to a supplemental bill, we can act on it and then go back to this legislation. Let's be clear about what is going on here. I think it would be a terrible mistake for the majority leader to pull this legislation. If that is what he wants to do, then he can do it, but it has nothing to do with Senators not willing to be out here debating amendments. Amendment No. 359 (Purpose: To limit the effects of domestic violence on the lives of children, and for other purposes)

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, I now offer my third amendment. This is an amendment that is called the children who witness domestic violence protection amendment. We have heard a lot about the violence children see on television or the violence that children see in movies. We have heard a lot about the violence that bombards our children from video games. Do you want to know something? The worst part of all is the violence in the lives of children that is not in the spotlight. Increasingly, children are witnessing real-life violence in their homes. In fact, it is in their own homes that many children witness violence for the first time. Over 3 million children in the United States of America are witnessing violence in their homes each year and it is having a profound impact on their development. Whether or not these children are physically injured by the violence, they carry with them lasting emotional scars from having been exposed to the threat of and trauma of injury, assault, or killing. This exposure to family violence changes the way children view the world and may change the value they place on life itself. It affects their ability to learn, to establish relationships, and to cope with stress. Witnessing domestic violence has such a profound impact on children, placing them at high risk for anxiety, depression and even suicide. Furthermore, these child victims may exhibit more aggressive antisocial and fearful behaviors. They are also at much greater risk of becoming future offenders, which is one of the reasons I offer this amendment to this legislation. Exposure to family violence, many studies suggest, is the strongest predictor of violent delinquent behavior among adolescents. It is estimated that between 20 and 40 percent of chronically violent adolescents have witnessed extreme parental conflict. When I talk to judges back home, they tell me it is all predictable who the 13- and 14-year-olds are who are going to appear in their court. They go back through their records and they see the violence in the families, many of these kids having experienced this violence directly or having seen it. In a Justice Department-funded study of children in Rochester, NY, children who had been victims of violence within their families were 24 percent more likely to report violent behavior as adolescents than those who had been maltreated in childhood. Can you believe that? This statistic says that kids are even more prone to become violent as adolescents who have just witnessed violence in their families as opposed to those kids who have actually been maltreated themselves, abused in their childhood. Adolescents who were not themselves victimized, but who had grown up in families where domestic violence had occurred were 21 percent more likely to report violent delinquency than those not so exposed. Overall, children exposed to multiple forms of family violence reported twice the rate of youth violence as those from nonviolent families. So, again, if we are talking about how to prevent the delinquency, how to deal with kids before they get into trouble, we have to get more support to kids who witness this violence in their homes. A 1994 survey of 115 mothers in the waiting room of Boston City Hospital's Primary Care Clinic found that by age 6, 1 in 10 children had witnessed a knifing or shooting. An additional 18 percent of the children under age 6 had witnessed pushing, hitting or shoving. Half of the reported violence--half of the reported violence--occurred in the child's home. Let me tell you about Tony and Sara from Minnesota. Tony is 10 years old, and his sister Sara is 8. Tony and Sara were severely traumatized after seeing their father brutally attack their mother. They were forced to watch their father drag their mother out to the driveway, douse her with gasoline, and hold the flaming match inches from her. Tony and Sara are not the only children in our country who were terrified by violence like this, sometimes on a daily basis. Children who witness domestic violence are often traumatized and they need support. Who is a child going to turn to when their mother is the victim of their father? Who is a child going to talk to when their sibling has emotionally shut down and no longer speaks? Who is a child going to go to for help when they need assistance? Children like Tony and Sara have the right to know that what is happening in their home is wrong. Children like Tony and Sara have the right to feel that we care about their safety. My legislation, which I am offering as an amendment today, is a comprehensive first step toward confronting the impact that witnessing domestic violence has on children in America. This bill addresses this issue from multiple perspectives--including mental health, education, child protective services, supervised visitation centers, law enforcement, and crisis nurseries. Mental health. I have visited, with my wife Sheila, programs in Boston and San Francisco that are forging creative partnerships in their communities to meet the needs of traumatized children. That is what this amendment is about. More must be done. To address the devastating impact that witnessing domestic violence has on the mental health of children, my amendment provides nonprofit agencies with the funds needed to design and implement multisystem interventions for child witnesses. This partnership would involve the courts, the schools, health care providers, child protective services, battered women programs, and others. What we would be talking about would be guidelines to evaluate the needs of children who witness this violence, safety and security procedures for child witnesses and their families, counseling and advocacy, and outreach and training to community professionals. I met Pamela in Brainerd, MN. Pamela was a battered woman. Her husband threatened to kill her, so she finally left him after 9 years of abuse. But Pamela says that the damage has already been done to her children. She has two children. They are 18 and 15 years old. She says that both her children have turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with the abuse they witnessed. Pamela's 15-year-old son is currently in a treatment facility. Pamela and her children would have had a better chance if mental health services had been available to them sooner. We cannot send more of our Nation's children into drug treatment facilities and juvenile prisons when we have the opportunity to intervene early and to heal them. That is what this amendment is all about. Education. My amendment also encourages collaboration between domestic violence community agencies and schools to provide educational programs and support services for these kids. What happens is that the school officials quite often do not recognize what is going on. This child has seen this violence in his or her home over and over and over again. They come to school; they may not stay awake because they did not sleep that night because they were so terrified; they may act out; they maybe cannot concentrate, and yet quite often what happens is that these kids, because they have witnessed this domestic violence, are not able to learn, but our education community does not know what is going on with them. So we provide the funding and the support for collaboration. This is a great amendment, I say to my colleague from Utah. When I was out in rural Minnesota, I met a woman who serves as a guardian to a boy who has witnessed domestic violence. The boy's mother is a battered woman and is now separated from the boy's father. The guardian told me that the boy's teacher reported that the boy had been mean to a girl across the aisle in the classroom, so the boy was sent to be ``timed out.'' When this boy was asked about how he was treating the girl, he said that he was not being mean. He said that he hit the girl because he wanted her to do what he said. He said he hit her because, and I quote, ``that's how dad gets mom to do things.'' I will quote that again. This little boy said: I hit this girl because ``that's how dad gets mom to do things.'' ``That's how dad gets mom to do things.'' Children cannot always compartmentalize traumatic events. Instead, the domestic violence comes to school with each and every child witness. It undermines their school performance, their relationships with other children, and we need to get them help. Child protective services, the third part of this. This legislation also addresses domestic violence and the people who work to protect our children from abuse and neglect. There is a significant overlap between domestic violence and child abuse. In families where one form of violence exists, there is a likelihood that the other does, too. In a national survey, researchers found that 50 percent of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children. The problem is that the child protective services and the domestic violence organizations have separately set up programs to address one of these forms of violence yet few address both when they occur together in families. This amendment provides incentives for local governments to collaborate with domestic violence agencies in administering their child welfare programs. Madam President, I want to go to the second part of this amendment. What you have here is a picture of Brandon and Alex Frank. I met their mom. These two children were murdered by their father. This amendment increases the funding available for supervised visitation centers. What happens quite often is visitation provides a batterer with another way to batter. This amendment would create a grants program whereby domestic violence service providers could apply for money for what we call family visitation centers. This is extremely important. For example, usually it is the woman who is battered. The man is now out of her home, thank God, but he still has custody rights. He comes to visit the child. Quite often when he brings the child back to the home or when there is an exchange at the home, the violence takes place again, or he has custody and he can get the children over a weekend. These visitation centers would enable that father to still see the children but it would be supervised visitation to protect the children. On July 3, 1996, 5-year-old Brandon and 4-year-old Alex were murdered by their father during an unsupervised visit. Their mother Angela-- Sheila and I met her not too long ago; she has met her several times-- was separated from Kurt Frank, the father. During her marriage, Angela was physically and emotionally abused by Frank, and Frank had hit Brandon and split open his lip when he stepped in front of his mother during a domestic violence incident. Angela had an order of protection against Kurt Frank, but during custody hearings her request for her husband to only receive supervised visits was rejected. Kurt Frank murdered his two sons during an unsupervised visit. These are the two children. This amendment says, let's do a better job of protecting these children. Madam President, this amendment also provides further training to law enforcement officers. We have met with some great people in the law enforcement community, and they say that they now realize they come to the home but they quite often have not been able to understand the effect that this has on the children. They come to break it up. They come to protect the woman. They come to make it clear to the man that this is a crime. The children fall between the cracks. This would enable the law enforcement community to recognize the needs of children who have witnessed domestic violence, to meet children's immediate needs at the scene of the crime, to establish a collateral working relationship between police officers and local domestic violence agencies. Finally--I want my colleague to know that I am actually summarizing this amendment; I am almost finished--crisis nurseries. Families faced with domestic violence also need a safe place for their children during a time of crisis. Mary Ann, a mother of two, was dealing with an abusive boyfriend, and she knew that she needed to end the relationship. Mary Ann turned to a local crisis nursery for help. The nursery volunteers cared for her children while she ended the abusive relationship. The nursery staff played a critical role in supporting and encouraging Mary Ann and helping her to make a better life for herself and her children. This amendment provides funds to States to assist private and public agencies and organizations to provide crisis nurseries for children who are abused, neglected, at risk of abuse or neglect, or who are families receiving child protective services. Nurseries will be available to provide a safe place for children and to alleviate the social and emotional stress among children and families who are impacted by domestic violence. I have to say to you that I believe this amendment that deals with providing support services for children who witness domestic violence is one of the most important amendments I have ever brought to the floor of the Senate. I want my colleagues to believe--not many of them are here, and this is one of the things that bothers me the most. I just don't believe 2\1/2\ minutes is going to be enough time. I want Democrats and I want Republicans to understand that for all too many children, at least 3 million children in our country, this is devastating. Every 15 seconds, a woman is battered; every 15 seconds, a woman is battered in her home. A home should be a safe place. These children, even if they themselves aren't battered, they see this violence and it has a devastating impact. It is directly related to this legislation. Judges will tell you that a very high percentage of kids who end up committing violent crime are kids who come from homes where they have witnessed this violence. This amendment is a great amendment which says, we do it at the community level, but we provide the support and the incentives and enable local communities to pull together law enforcement, to pull together child protection people, to pull together welfare department people, to pull together women who work at battered women shelters, to pull together teachers and education people, and we get the support services for these kids that they so desperately need. That is what this amendment is about. Madam President, I will at this time send the amendment to the desk, and I ask my colleague from Utah--I will conclude in 5 minutes. I send this amendment to the desk. I ask my colleague if I could have 5 minutes, and only 5 minutes, to make a statement on one terribly important issue to me, and then I will be done. I send this amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent to send this amendment to the desk.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Yes.

Mr. WELLSTONE

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