Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I have an amendment I would send to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator McCain.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I move to reconsider the vote.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague from Indiana and also my colleague from Tennessee for their thoughtful and important amendment, and I thank them for their support.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, could I add Senator Bryan as an original cosponsor of the Wellstone-McCain amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. We have no objection.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for a question? And I say to my colleague from Maine, I will not go with other questions as I know she wants to speak, and I had a chance to speak yesterday. Isn't it also true, taking the experience of last winter--and I could ask this of the chairman as well, Senator Specter--what has been happening, because we have really been underfunded, we depend on the emergency funding and we go through this drill every year where then what we have to do is seek this additional emergency funding? We certainly had to do that last year. And then, of course, States never know what they are going to be able to do. So the last thing we should be doing, am I correct, is cutting $500 million? It would gut the whole program.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I actually will be brief. I had a chance yesterday to speak in opposition to the amendment of my colleague from Arizona, Senator Kyl. I know that other Senators have spoken about this as well. I was on the floor early this morning when both Senator Specter and Senator Harkin spoke about it. Mr. President, the part of the Kyl amendment which I am sympathetic to, and my guess is that a good many other Senators are sympathetic to it as well, would be the effort to try to expand funding for the Pell Grant Program. And, Mr. President, as my colleague, Senator Harkin from Iowa, said earlier this morning, interestingly enough, the Pell Grant Program, named after Claiborne Pell, our Senator--I think all of us really came to admire and believe in Claiborne Pell--really does represent a kind of positive role for the public sector, for Government, because what we as a country have decided is that there are certain decisive areas of life in a nation where you do not just leave it up to a market verdict. If, in fact, you have a family, a young person or not such a young person who cannot afford higher education, there is a role to make sure that man or that woman can afford to go on to college, especially since this is becoming more and more important in determining how they will do economically or how their families will do. Indeed, there is a statistic that is a shameful statistic that we have had since the late 1970's, about an 8-percent graduation rate from colleges and universities of those men and women from families with incomes under $20,000 a year, the main reason being that they have not been able to afford to go on and get their higher education. I said this yesterday--and I will have an amendment that will try to speak to this today or tomorrow--it is also true that with all the discussion about HOPE scholarships and tax credits, since they are not refundable, all families with incomes below $28,000 a year are not going to become eligible. So we still have a huge hole, especially for those students from moderate- and low-income families. So it seems to me, if we are going to be talking about providing support for higher education and for families and for young men and women and older men and women--many of our students are older now in our community colleges--we ought to make sure that low-income are included. The problem with the Kyl amendment is that he takes the funding from the LIHEAP, the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program, which is a lifeline program for very vulnerable families, especially for those of us who represent cold weather States, although part of low-income energy assistance is also, I say to the Chair, since he is from the great State of North Carolina, some of it also is for cooling assistance. I think it was two summers ago that we had a number of people in Chicago, poor people, who died, elderly people, from exposure to heat. They just could not afford air conditioning. So, Mr. President, what the Kyl amendment does is it rescinds about $500 million, takes about half of what is in a $1 billion program--it has already been cut way down--and it essentially ends the program. Mr. President, I just want people to know, my colleagues to know--I think they do--I think we are going to have a strong vote in opposition to the amendment, and that the vast majority of the recipients of an energy grant is maybe $300 a year, or thereabouts. It is a lifeline program. It just enables an elderly person to be able to afford heat and not have to then spend more than she can afford and, therefore, not be able to get ahold of a prescription drug she needs or maybe have to cut back on food on the table. It is not much. It is extremely important. The vast majority of the citizens--there are about 110,000 households in Minnesota that have participated, have incomes under $8,000 a year. These are not wealthy people or middle-income people. These are people who are hard pressed. This is a lifeline program. It represents the goodness in us. And we cannot be gutting this program. I have been involved in this fight to kind of maintain or protect the LIHEAP program for the last 3 or 4 years. I do not know why we have to go through this every time. Mr. President, let me just make it clear that if you wanted to expand the Pell Grant Program, I can think of other ways to do it. I mean, now we know that with the B-2, the stealth bomber program, we have planes that cannot fly in the rain or the snow. I mean, I will have an amendment later on that will say, let us not build any more of these turkeys. And you can just transfer that funding for the Pell Grant Program. But do not take it out of low-income energy assistance. I see my colleague from Pennsylvania here. I thank him for his graciousness in allowing me to have some time to speak about this. But again, colleagues have heard it from the Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, Senator Harkin, any number of Senators who have come to the floor on this. And, again, I hope there will be a strong vote against the amendment. It is extremely important. It is a matter of elementary decency, if you will, to provide people with some support that they need. It is a lifeline support program. And I tell you, to a cold weather State like Minnesota, it is very important. We already know in Minnesota right now that we are going to have to ask for some additional emergency energy assistance. We did last winter. That is what happens. This is an underfunded program, not overfunded. The only reason I do not have an amendment calling for more funding is I know the White House, the administration, has been good about providing that emergency funding for States that need it. So, Mr. President, the last thing in the world that makes any sense is to essentially gut this program by rescinding $500 million. To all my colleagues, I hope you will vote against this amendment. To Senator Kyl, who is a Senator that I like and respect, I think you are profoundly mistaken with this amendment, as much as I appreciate your good work here. I hope that we will have a very strong bipartisan vote against this amendment.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I do not know whether or not my colleague, Senator Kyl from Arizona, will be back today or whether we will come back to his amendment tomorrow, but I want to just very briefly comment on his amendment. The Kyl amendment, as I understand it--I have the amendment before me--amounts essentially to over a $500 million rescission, if you will, in funding for what is called LIHEAP, the low-income energy assistance program. We have seen cuts over the years in this low-income energy assistance program. It is really now under a billion dollars total. So in many ways we would essentially, if this amendment passes, be dealing with the end of the program. Mr. President, I actually would come to the floor and have an amendment which would call for an increase in funding for low-income energy assistance. And the reason I do not is that we have been sort of going through the same drill every year, which is that come the cold winter months--this happens in Minnesota; it happens in many of our cold-weather States--what happens is, because we do not have enough by way of appropriations, because the vast majority of these families are families with incomes under $7,000 or $8,000 a year, because about half the people helped are children, because close to 50 percent of these families are working poor families, they work 52 weeks a year, 40 hours a week, and because, Mr. President, these grants, this assistance, represents a kind of lifeline for people so they are not faced with the choice of ``Do I pay for my heat? Then I can't afford prescription drugs or I can't afford food,'' we have been supportive of this. What happens, though not as supportive as we should be, the administration provides additional emergency funds because, you know, whether it be in Minnesota or Indiana, I suppose, as well, what happens is that at the county level where the people live, at the grassroots level, we get calls. And these are desperation calls. So we actually provide a supplement to what we have in the bill by way of emergency funding. But for a State like Minnesota or Indiana it is a bit of a nightmare to plan. People never know. They never know. So now we have an amendment which would really just make this situation, which is not great--we do not have the funding that we should have for a program that helps people so they do not go cold. That is a kind of minimal standard of decency. It certainly is important to a cold-weather State like Minnesota. But now if this amendment was to pass--I do not think it will; I hope we will have a strong vote against it--it would be a nightmare. I just want to say to my colleague, whom I enjoy, that the part of the amendment which deals with expanding funding for the Pell grant I am all for. I think one of the things that was overlooked in the budget agreement--I think there was a bit too much exaggeration about how we were going to make sure that higher education was affordable for all our students because, to repeat one more time, the tax credit which goes to the HOPE scholarship program is not refundable. So if you come from a family below $27,000 a year, you may not be eligible, and many of the community college students in Minnesota are not. We also expanded the Pell grant a little bit, but if you talk to the financial aid officers around the country, I think all of them will tell you that the most effective, efficient way of providing the necessary support for young or not such young students--many of our students are older--to be able to afford higher education is the Pell grants. So I say to my colleague, it is a laudable goal. I will have an amendment on the floor to provide some additional funding for the Pell grants in this country. But you cannot do that on the backs of some of the poorest, most vulnerable citizens in the United States of America. I mean, you cannot take away energy assistance from people who, if they do not receive this emergency assistance during cold winters, could very well go cold or maybe pay for heat but then not have enough to eat. This is just an unacceptable trade-off. I am disappointed we have to go through this whole fight again, but, you know, all of us do what we think is right. I know my colleague from Arizona is doing this because he thinks it is the right thing to do. But we have had very strong bipartisan support over the LIHEAP Program. I think we all know already that it is minimum funding. We all know already it is not enough. We all know already that we end up every winter having to provide additional emergency funding. So the last thing we want to do is essentially gut this program. So, again, I share part of the goal of this because indeed I will have an amendment that will talk about expanding Pell grant funding. But you do not take the funding from some of the poorest, most vulnerable families in America. I am speaking as a Senator from a cold-weather State, Minnesota, but I think the vast majority of my colleagues share this sentiment as well. So when we come back to this, there will be a pretty strong debate. I hope we will have an overwhelmingly strong vote in opposition to this amendment. I also want to say, Mr. President--I will say it very briefly--that I look forward to starting tomorrow. I do intend to introduce an amendment to expand funding for Head Start. I have been doing some really interesting traveling and learned so much from people when I was in eastern Kentucky. I, by the way, would like to say to the Chair, not in sort of a syrupy, senatorial courtesy, if you will, but at my wife's family reunion, the Isom family in eastern Kentucky, about half the people were from Indiana. I had an opportunity to tell them I really enjoyed working with Senator Coats from Indiana. It was kind of nice. Most of them are Republicans. I did not change their view, but they are wonderful people. They think a great deal of the Chair. I think they are disappointed he is in fact not going to be continuing in the Senate. I say that to the Chair. One of the things you learn, especially as you visit Head Start, is that now that we are talking more about the very early years, I mean the funding, when it comes to really trying to help with families where children are 1 or 2, under the age of 3, we have practically no funding at all. I tell you, I met some wonderful people in eastern Kentucky. One woman who has been with Head Start, I don't know, from the very beginning, her husband died of black lung, and she has not had a high school degree. With the help of Head Start, she went back and got her high school degree, went on and got a college education and has been a Head Start teacher for 30 years. I asked her, ``Why do you do this? You can't get wealthy. You don't make very much money at all.'' She talked about her love of children. You could just feel it. So I want to have an amendment that talks about expanding some funding for Head Start. I certainly want to have an amendment that deals with the Pell grant program. I will have one other amendment that will deal with this whole issue of what are we going to do about rebuilding crumbling schools. I heard my colleague, Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts, in a very eloquent way say there is agreement on this except we do not seem to match our words with resources. I am seeing, as I travel around the country, some of these crumbling schools. It is sort of like when we talk about family values. We have to make ``values'' a verb. It cannot just be a noun. We have to sort of live it, do it. If we value these children, we just cannot have children going to schools that are crumbling. You cannot have children walking into schools where the ceilings are falling--I have seen these conditions-- or when the stench of urine is in the hallway or toilets are decrepit and you cannot even wash your hands after you go to the bathroom. As Senator Kennedy said earlier, we are saying to these kids --no matter what we think we are saying--what we are saying is that we do not value you much. We have to figure out a way as a nation to do something about this. I was at a gathering with a top urban educator. I so appreciated her remarks because what she said is: Look, you all can debate whether there should be tests or standards or how you measure accountability and all the rest of it, and it is all debatable, but, she said, some things are simple. Just invest some money in infrastructure. Help rebuild these crumbling schools. She is right. I will have another amendment that will deal with that. But I do hope when we come back--I want my colleague from Arizona to know there will be a very fierce debate about this. I mean, for the last several years I have come out here. Senator Kennedy has joined me. Senator Harkin, Senator Specter, a number of different Senators have been very strong on this. Senator Jeffords has been a very strong leader on this. And we have had to fight every year for this low-income energy assistance. I do not think we should have to fight so hard for it because it is really just a basic lifeline program. My colleague from Arizona, whether he intends to do so or not, is essentially gutting this program, ending it. We cannot do that. We cannot do that. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask whether or not the amendment we are on right now is the Kyl amendment; is that correct?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me just say to my colleague from North Dakota that I appreciate his analysis. I look forward to joining him in this debate. I think he is really one of the most eloquent Senators, or for that matter Congressmen, in Washington on a set of issues that are so important to working people, so important to producers, and I thank him.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that will provide safe havens for children who are members of families in which violence is a problem. I am pleased to have my distinguished colleague from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, join me in this effort. The prevalence of family violence in our society is staggering. Studies show that 25 percent of all violence occurs among people who are related to one another. Data also indicate that the incidence of violence in families escalates during separation and divorce. In fact, over 70 percent of women who are treated for domestic violence in emergency departments have already separated from the person who has inflicted their injuries. Many of these assaults occur in the context of child visitation. This clearly places children at risk not only of witnessing violence, but also of becoming victims of violence within their own families. Children who are exposed to violence suffer many long term effects of this exposure. In addition to the obvious physical consequences of violence, there are innumerable psychosocial effects. For example, a child who learns from his parents, his role models, that violence is a way of resolving differences, or controlling another person, will grow up believing that it is normal to use violence in everyday interpersonal relationships. As a consequence, he will grow up believing that it is acceptable to physically hurt those people he loves the most. A young girl who watches her mother being beaten up by her father may come to understand that physical injury is just one aspect of a ``normal" relationship. Children who are exposed to violence are at risk for mental health problems and substance abuse problems as they grow up. When we allow children to grow up believing that violence is normal and acceptable, we do a great deal of damage to their lives and decrease their chances for healthy futures. In order to prevent the risk of exposure to violence, I am introducing this legislation, to provide funding for the creation of child safety centers. These centers will provide a safe environment in which children can visit with their parents without risk of being exposed to violence in the context of their family relationships. This bill will protect children from the trauma of witnessing or experiencing violence, sexual abuse, neglect, abduction, rape, or death during parent-child visitation or visitation exchanges; protect victims of violence from experiencing further violence during child visitation or visitation exchanges and will provide safe havens for children and their parents during visitation or visitation exchanges. This act will provide grants to States to enable the states to enter into contract and cooperative agreements with public or private nonprofit entities in order to establish child safety centers. These centers will operate for the purpose of facilitating supervised visitation and visitation exchange. The services provided by the centers will be evaluated each year, so that we will learn how many people are served by the centers and what types of problems are encountered by the clients of the centers. The act will authorize appropriations of $65,000,000 for each of the fiscal years 1998 through 2000. Mr. President, this legislation will go a long way in protecting children from family violence and in providing support for families that are experiencing violence. We need to do this to protect our children and give them the chance to grow up without believing that violence is normal. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that will ensure that battered women have increased access to affordable housing through tenant-based rental assistance. The lack of safe, affordable housing is a major factor in forcing women to return to their violent partners, either directly from a shelter or after attempting to set up an independent home. This bill would address that important problem by providing section 8 housing certificates to low- income women who are victims of domestic violence. Domestic violence in our society is a staggering problem. An estimated 4 million American women experience a serious assault by a husband or boyfriend each year. In 1993 alone, over 1,300 women were reportedly killed by abusive partners or former partners. Battered women are confronted with numerous obstacles in their efforts to survive and escape domestic violence. Some obstacles arise from the dynamics of abusive relationships--dependency, isolation, and fear. Economic obstacles, however, create some of the must difficult problems for women trying to leave a violent partner, including child and health care costs, and the lack of safe, affordable housing. Battered women and their children are a large proportion of the emergency shelter population. Even if shelter space is available, access to affordable housing, housing subsidies and services are needed to keep women from having to return to a violent home. A study in Michigan found that 60 percent of those who left shelters and returned to their violent partners did so because of too little affordable housing. Equally as disturbing is the fact that 50 percent of all homeless women and children in this country are fleeing domestic violence. There have been cases brought to my attention in my home State of Minnesota where women trying to escape abusive relations could have benefited from this legislation, and we know that sadly there are many more stories from around the country. One case involves a young mother from a small town in central Minnesota. Rachel left her child's father after suffering 2 years of abuse at his hands. She and her baby stayed in a battered women's shelter for a month until she found an apartment. After paying her rent each month, Rachel was unable to provide for her family. Seeing no other options, she returned to the home of her abuser; after a 2 month respite, he began to batter her again. This legislation would assist women, like Rachel, fleeing abuse to get affordable housing by authorizing $50 million in funding for section 8 housing certificates. The Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] would allocate the resources to public housing authorities which would issue the housing certificates to domestic violence victims. Only those victims who met the other requirements of the section 8 program would be eligible. HUD estimates that this program would provide 7,500 housing units nationwide for victims of domestic violence. Mr. President, this legislation will go a long way in removing a major road-block for battered women who are trying to escape domestic violence--the lack of affordable housing. We need to give these women an opportunity other than living on the streets, in shelters, returning to their batterers. This legislation would provide battered women and their children an opportunity to rebuild their lives in a stable home. Furthermore, this legislation conveys the message to abusers that we will not tolerate their violence, that we will not continue to allow them to drive their victims into the shelters and the street. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me, first of all, say to Senator Roth and Senator Moynihan, since my comments will be in disagreement, that I have tremendous respect for all the work that they have done. Both of them represent the very best of public service. But I can't, as a matter of principle, vote for this budget agreement. I support balancing the budget through a process which observes basic principles of economic and social justice and embodies the notion of shared sacrifice in pursuit of the common good, the common interest, the people's interest. But despite the cheers of its supporters, this deal fails miserably those tests. In the midst of all the cheering over this deal, we face a quiet crisis. It is not a war, it is not a broad economic calamity, but it is a crisis, nonetheless. This is, by the averages and the indicators, a prosperous time for our country. It is a time of sustained economic growth and low inflation, of a booming stock market and low unemployment. There is no blare of bugles, no moan of universal distress, no loud hordes of protesters clamoring in our streets. But averages are misleading. They tell nothing of the end of the curve, the height at the top or the depth at the bottom, and that is where our crisis resides. It is a quiet crisis of money, power, and injustice. It is the crisis of a nation in danger of abandoning the principles of equality and justice that are so fundamental to our resilience and to our future together. The principle of economic justice in this bill has been eclipsed. I fear it will accelerate growing inequalities in our country that we all should be committed to combat. We have moved in recent years back to a darker time. It is a more stratified America. It is really two Americas: one America with mounting access to the things that make life richer in possibility; the other caught in a constant struggle to make ends meet. One able to purchase the security of gated communities and private schools; the other beset by the dangers of a decaying social fabric. One America swiftly navigating the information superhighway, the other lacking the rudimentary skills needed to navigate an ever-more complex society. One enriched by a rising stock market; the other at the uncertain mercies of the job market. One wondering when to take a vacation to Europe or Asia; the other hoping to save enough to take a family to a ball game. This other America, this second America is not inhabited by just the poor or neglected minority. It is, in fact, the residence of the American majority. It is the homeland of most of our workers, most of our families, most of our children, and it is precisely this America that the budget agreement fails to serve fully and fairly. I would support a deal that required truly shared sacrifice while investing in our future, but shared sacrifice is not what this package is all about. Instead, it is about working families sacrificing and Wall Street investors and big companies garnering the lion's share of the benefits. Balancing the short-term budget fairly is a responsible and it is a worthwhile goal, made easier by our recent economic boom. But building a strong economy, preserving a shared prosperity, ensuring social and economic stability for the next generation by investing in their health and their skills and their character, our children, this is a far loftier and far more difficult goal for which we should have been striving in this budget agreement, and this agreement falls short of those goals. First, the agreement is unfair. At times, it is grossly unfair, I say to my colleagues, to the vast majority of working Americans who deserve real tax relief but will not get it in this bill, because most of the benefits go to the wealthiest 3 to 4 percent of the taxpayers and the profitable companies. Second, this agreement is shortsighted, starving our Nation's investment needs, investments critical to our future economic and social prosperity, in order to pay for large, unfair, and unwarranted tax cuts. Third, and perhaps most ironically, since its ostensible purpose is to balance the budget, it is fiscally irresponsible. By locking into place hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy, as far as the eye can see, many of which will grow larger and larger over time, it will cause the deficit to explode just as the baby boomers are expected to retire and begin to draw on programs like Social Security and Medicare. While this agreement has been hailed by some Democrats because it partially preserves funding for certain health care, education, and other programs that Republicans have been trying to slash for almost 3 years, and it is hailed by Republicans because it contains the huge tax cuts for the wealthy for which they have so long fought and sought, a closer look is called for in the midst of all this cheerleading. As a legislator, I have discovered that too often if the deal appears to give all things to all parties, as this one does, something is not quite right. Americans should take a closer look at the details of this package. When they do, they will be very troubled by what they see. Even with the marginal improvements which were forced by the President and the Democratic colleagues in the Congress, it still is a deeply flawed agreement which mortgages the economic futures of our children for the short-term political benefit which some will derive by claiming to have balanced the budget. Unless we revisit this deal soon, it will lock us into a program of huge tax cuts, mainly going to the wealthiest of people, funded by equally large spending cuts in virtually every single basic function of Government--environmental protection, airline safety, crime control, science and health and technology research, health care for the frail and the elderly and the poor. And, Mr. President, it will do so while continuing the Republican Congress tradition of stuffing more money into the Pentagon than even the Pentagon has requested, more B-2 bombers and ships and fighters than we need, mostly to preserve jobs in key congressional districts. As one of my colleagues observed, this bill sacrifices tomorrow's hopes for today's headlines. That is a mistake for which we will all pay for years to come, just as we did for the mistakes of the early 1980's and its exploding deficits. Mr. President, the President of the United States said, among other things, he would only sign on to a deal that was fair, fiscally responsible, with no exploding deficits in the next 10 years or so. These were the basic tests that he said he would apply to any final agreement. But this agreement clearly fails the fairness test. The sad fact is that low-income families get virtually nothing--nothing--from this tax cut bill, working families get very little, and the wealthy are the big winners in this tax bill. While the ink is barely dry on the deal--and so we do not have any official information about its actual distributional impact--we are asked to vote on this without getting any official information about who exactly is going to benefit and who is going to be asked to sacrifice. Preliminary analysis suggests a disastrously lopsided approach skewed to the very rich, those making over $200,000 a year annually. That is not the middle class in America. The nonpartisan group, Citizens for Tax Justice, has run the numbers through a fairly sophisticated distributional model. And they found that the tax package delivers about half of its benefits to the top 5 percent of the taxpayers. Half of the benefits go to the top 5 percent of the taxpayers. The average tax cut for middle-class working families and individuals, when you figure in all the tax hikes and cuts together, is about $200. For the richest 1 percent, it is about $16,000. I had hoped for substantial tax relief for working families. This bill only offers about one-fourth of its overall relief to those making under $100,000 a year. I think working families should not have to settle for scraps from the tax cut table. They should have been the first in line for relief. But that is not the case. But just a few examples. The alternative minimum tax was passed in 1986. With tax fairness, large companies ought to pay, large profitable companies ought to pay at least some tax. That has essentially been gutted. The Treasury Department estimates that these changes would take 76,000 profitable corporations completely off the tax rolls, and to the tune of $18 billion over the next 10 years. Another example. While this budget provides little or no relief for working families, it gives wealthy Americans huge capital gains tax cuts. The vast majority of these benefits from the cuts in capital gains go to big investors, people making $200,000, $300,000, and $400,000 annually. Hardly tax fairness. Mr. President, not only is this deal unfair, it is shortsighted, it ignores our most critical needs as a nation, including repairing and rebuilding our crumbling schools. Not one penny is invested in our crumbling schools, including dealing with our crumbling inner cities, our underdeveloped rural areas. Through its spending controls, it provides for huge and still unspecified cuts in Federal investments that my colleagues apparently do not like to talk about much, an estimated $272 billion in such nondefense cuts over the next 10 years while it claims to ``protect'' some priority programs. I am very skeptical. There is not a penny here for crumbling schools to secure educational opportunities for children. How come that was not a priority program? There is too little for job training for dislocated workers, for workers struggling to move off welfare into good jobs, and there is too little by way of reinvesting in our inner cities, the environmental protection, in basic key investments critical to our Nation's future. Mr. President, I voted against the spending bill. And I will vote against this tax bill. I do not understand how my colleagues can basically view these matters separately. They are part of one package and one deal. And I will just give some examples. We now have huge, significant cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. And they are being used to pay for the tax cuts in this deal, which disproportionately go to the top 1, 2, 3 percent of the population that need the assistance the least. That is part of the tradeoff. Mr. President, Medicare will be cut by $115 billion over the next 5 years. And the proposal assumes $385 billion in cuts over 10 years. In Medicaid, we will be cutting $13 billion over the next 5 years. Mr. President, in rural Minnesota, where the hospitals and the clinics are not greedy--a small profit margin--60, 70, 80 percent of the patient payment mix is Medicare and Medicaid. Please, do not have any illusions about this. The cuts to the providers will make it difficult for some of these hospitals and clinics to go on. When they no longer exist, that hurts our rural communities. Mr. President, the cuts in medical assistance disproportionately hurt our children's hospitals and disproportionately hurt our inner-city hospitals which are safety net hospitals for the poorest Americans-- including children--in America. My colleagues say to me, ``Well, but this overall agreement, it's not that bad, after all.'' And I say, ``Compared to what?'' To the earlier Republican bills, which the huge majority of American people rejected, this is an improvement. We did not go forward with a $5 copay, even though it passed in the Senate, for elderly people for home health care visits. We have done better by way of graduate medical education. And, yes, Mr. President, we have $24 billion more in children's health care. And it includes also some additional parity, nondiscrimination for children and families struggling with mental illness. I thank my colleague, Senator Domenici. It is a labor of love to work with him on this. But, Mr. President, we still do not know at the State level how much of this will reach the children. We hope it does. There are 10 million children without coverage. I have seen projections anywhere from 1\1/2\ million to 5 million will be covered, though it is block granted to the States. And we do not have the ironclad guarantees that we need. We need to fulfill our goal of providing adequate and complete care for all children in America. But, Mr. President, irony built upon ironies. My colleagues say it is not that bad, we are doing better for children. I give credit where credit is due. But last Congress we cut $25 billion in the major food nutrition program for children. It ultimately will be a 20-percent cut in food stamps, and about 70 percent of the recipients are children. Almost all of them are in working families, usually families with incomes under $7,000 a year. This directly affects the quality of their health care. I did not see any restoration of any funding for the major child nutrition program in the United States of America. Mr. President, my colleagues say we did better for legal immigrants. We restored some of the supplemental security income for those immigrants that have been in this country, but, Mr. President, we eliminated all of the food nutrition assistance. So if you have an elderly Hmong woman in Saint Paul, and she has $450 of SSI and another $75 in food stamps, and that is her total monthly income--and that is exactly the figure for many people --we did not restore any, we did not restore one penny of food nutrition assistance. It is not that bad but, Mr. President, this piece of legislation is also not that good. Mr. President, I do not understand exactly what the concept of justice is here. I do not know what happened to the principle of justice and fairness. Not only do we have the tax cuts going disproportionately to the top 5 percent of the population, but even when we say we are going to help children and families, we decide that we will do nothing for the poorest. The child tax credit is refundable. And now we say it is refundable to families with incomes over $100,000 a year. But if you are a family with an income of under $18,000 a year, you are not eligible at all. We decided that families with over $100,000 a year needed the assistance. But since we have the earned-income tax credits, we decided that families with incomes under $18,000 a year would not be eligible for a child credit at all. What kind of standard of justice is that? I spent a lot of time with those families. I see their struggles. Don't tell me that those families, families in America with incomes under $18,000 a year, could not also have benefited from the tax credit so they could have provided their children with a little bit more. Don't tell me they would not have benefited. What concept of justice justifies a tax credit for families with incomes over $100,000 a year, but zero, no assistance, for families earning under $18,000 a year? Mr. President, on higher education, we have seen a great deal of discussion. I find it difficult to say this, but I am going to because 20 years of my life was devoted to higher education. Some of this is a bit hyped. Some of it is a bit hyped. Some of it is a bit of hype. Mr. President, I am grateful for the tax deductions. I am grateful for the tax credits which are nonrefundable, but every single financial aid officer you want to talk to, everyone involved in financial aid will tell you we should have expanded the Pell grants. The statistic that is unconscionable is that a flat 8 percent, since 1979, of those families with incomes under $20,000 a year, only a flat 8 percent have been able to graduate, men and women from those families, with affordability being a key problem. There are other problems but that is the major problem. There is really nothing in this piece of legislation for them. We expanded the Pell grant by $300, but the Pell grant is now meeting at best about 16 percent of the student's overall need. We could have expanded the Pell grant program up to $5,000 a year. It would have reached middle income as well for the same price tag as to what we did here with the tax deduction and the tax credits. But, Mr. President, the tax credits are nonrefundable. The tax credits are not refundable. I will just tell you that if you spend any time at the community colleges, you will find that most of the students are older and going back to school, and they have incomes of around $25,000, $26,000 a year. They are ineligible because they do not have the tax liability. And we are making the claim that this is essentially 2 years more of free education? It does not hold up. It does not hold up. Mr. President, we say we protected priority programs. We have hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, which will increase with every year, disproportionately going to the top 5 percent of the population, and altogether, Mr. President, we came up with not $5 billion that we were going to leverage for some investment in rebuilding crumbling schools, but we threw in $10 million at the end, $10 million for all of America. Mr. President, what kind of priorities are these? How could the administration have bargained this away? I was down in Delta City, MS, in Tunica, MS. I visited a school. This was an all-black school. The ceiling was kind of crumbling in. The toilets were decrepit. If you had wanted to wash your hands after going to the bathroom, you would not have been able to. But, Mr. President, I was in Chicago on Monday visiting with some of the housing projects, and I saw the same kind of schools. You look at these schools, they are so uninviting. They are crumbling. And we tell our children we put no value on them when we send children to such schools. The General Accounting Office tells us it costs $110 billion if we want to invest in rebuilding these crumbling schools. We have not invested anything in rebuilding crumbling schools--not really--just $10 million for the whole Nation. That is a joke, and it is a cruel joke. How can we say that we have protected our major priority programs when we don't invest anything in rebuilding crumbling schools in America? Mr. President, it is not just Chicago and Mississippi; it is North, East, South, and West. I say to my colleagues, if you say you are committed to education, we can have a debate about educational standards. Maybe they are good, maybe they are not. We can debate about how you measure academic performance. We can have all those debates. But this is simple: Don't send children to schools where the ceilings are falling in and the stench of urine is in the hallways and the buildings are decrepit and expect those children to do well. We say that this budget agreement protects our major priorities. What about these children? Aren't they our major priority? Mr. President, I was in Chicago on Monday in the Pilsen neighborhood with Congressmen Gutierrez and Bobby Rush at the Robert Taylor Home Housing Project. St. Augustine had a wonderful Head Start Program. It was a great program. I was inspired by their work. But, Mr. President, they could take 30-some children at the site we visited, and they have 335 children who want to participate--335 children who could be given a head start if we fully funded this program. Altogether we have added $324 million. We have 4 million children in the United States of America, from birth to age 5, who were not served by the Head Start Program, and we have invested a measly $324 million, which we claim--and it doesn't hold up under scrutiny--will lead to an additional 1 million children. Why don't we fully fund Head Start? If the program does what it says it does, which is to give children a head start, why give the tax benefits to the wealthiest of people and, at the same time, not the investment in rebuilding crumbling schools and not an investment in Head Start? Everywhere I go, all across the United States of America, whether it is rural or urban, I see the successes with kids, I see men and women who work with these children. They should be famous. They make too little money as Head Start teachers or as teacher assistants. We say these are the critical years, and we say the very early part of children's lives is the most critical time, and we invest $324 million, and that is it. Mr. President, many of my colleagues support this bill and they call it, on balance, a good piece of work. I simply cannot join them in their enthusiasm because I am too painfully aware of the people this bill leaves behind. Mr. President, the benefits are skewed toward America's very wealthy, and when working families find this out, they will not be pleased. Mr. President, this piece of legislation, this budget deal, leaves too many Americans behind. We can and we should balance the budget fairly and responsibly, observing the principle of shared sacrifice and economic justice, making the Tax Code fairer, simpler, and flatter in the process, and investing in our Nation's future. We could have done that because the economy is booming and it is much easier to do it now than a few years ago. But with this bill, Mr. President, we have failed in that effort at fairness. If this balanced budget agreement is to be the great accomplishment of 8 years of Democratic Presidency, then history will judge us harshly. With a budget that we already have, that is essentially in substantial balance because of the policies of the past 4 years, this agreement today is really a triumph of the past rather than a bridge to the century to come. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank him.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank both colleagues. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to take 15 minutes off the time that has been given to Senator Bumpers, and I ask Senator Moynihan whether I might get 10 minutes from his time, if that would be OK.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I defer to the chairman. I am hoping to get a chance to speak.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I know that we have amendments. But I yield some time to my colleague from New Jersey, who has been a real leader in this area.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I understand that this amendment will be accepted. I am very pleased. I think there is strong bipartisan support for it. We worked very hard to make sure it was kept in conference. I would like to thank Senator Hollings and Senator Gregg for their support, and Senator Torricelli who is out here on the floor. Mr. President, let me briefly summarize this amendment. This amendment essentially ensures that no one who is a victim of domestic violence will be denied legal representation because of the economic status of her or his abuser. Mr. President, I am saddened to have to really on the floor of the Senate make the point that what we have right now in the country is something close--it is a staggering problem. We have an estimated 4 million American women who experience a serious assault by a husband or boyfriend each year. In 1993 alone, over 1,300 women were reportedly killed by abusive partners or former partners. I want to make it clear that Legal Services has done a wonderful job. They have handled over 250,000 cases involving domestic violence; 50,000 of those cases involved clients seeking protection from abusive spouses. The problem is that all too often those on the receiving end of grants in some cases--I know in Minnesota this happens--they really do everything they can and extend the rules or figure out ways of providing legal representation. Most of the time it is for a woman. But sometimes what happens in other situations is they don't because it is a horrible catch-22 situation where the income of the husband or assets of the husband which are the assets of the household makes this woman who has been abused and beaten up ineligible for any legal representation. By the same token, she can't afford to have legal representation on her own, in which case she is without protection. This is critically important. I actually don't think that this is an exaggeration to say that this quite often is a life or death situation. So when we are talking about obtaining orders of protection, child support, and other kinds of protection, this is critically important. I again thank both of my colleagues for their support of this amendment. I want to thank Senator Torricelli who has been very active and a real leader in this area for his support. This is an important clarification. One more time, and I will finish. The legal services community in the country is doing the very best job. But, if we had a debate, I would have brought out to the floor many examples--very telling examples--of women who have not been able to receive the protection. Legal Services lawyers want to provide it but are not at all clear that they can because of the income of the husband and sometimes the income of a wife. This is a tragedy. This is a huge step forward. It is a very significant amendment. I thank both of my colleagues for their support.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, just a few thoughts about the budget agreement. There is still a lot of drafting going on, so to a certain extent I think all of us are at a little bit of a disadvantage in that we have not seen all of the specifics, but I would like to raise a couple of questions about this agreement, and I raise these questions given what I think is the important standard of fairness. First of all, I hope that all Senators, Democrats and Republicans, will have before them the distributional data, that is to say some understanding as to who will benefit from these tax cuts, before we are asked to vote on the tax-cut part of this bill. It seems to me this is kind of a prerequisite for good public policy. I remain very skeptical that, indeed, these tax cuts, when you look at who is really going to benefit with each passing year, will not disproportionately go to those people who are least in need of any assistance. At the same time, I see a tradeoff that seems quite unacceptable. Every single time it looks like low-income and moderate-income families get the short end of the stick. I think we should set the bar at a higher level, and I think those families should count. Let me just give but a couple of examples. Mr. President, the child credit, we are now hearing from the White House, will go to families with incomes under $30,000 a year or under $28,000 a year, the argument being that, indeed, these families pay Social Security taxes and they should receive a child credit as well as those families with incomes over $30,000 a year. But, as it turns out, families with incomes under $16,000 a year are not going to receive any child care credit. I have had a chance to travel some around the country and visit with poor children, visit with low-income families. I don't understand how in the world we could be talking about fairness if, in fact, those families are not going to receive any of the child care credits, those families most in need. Another example is on the higher education piece. I have said this over and over again, and I hope I am wrong, but I don't think I am. I was a teacher for 20 years. I spent a lot of time at the community colleges. Mr. President, if the tax credits are not refundable, then those students or those families with incomes under $28,000 a year or $27,000 a year, that are not going to have any tax liability, they are not going to receive any of the assistance. So when it comes to those students who have been least able to afford higher education, they are still going to be waiting for some of this assistance. Add to that some of the concerns that I think all of us have to have about the cuts or reductions in payment in Medicare and medical assistance, in particular those of us--and I come from such a State-- where we have strong rural communities. We have to worry about the negative impact this is going to have on rural health care providers. If we don't have hospitals or clinics, then we are not able to deliver the care out in our communities. We have to have concerns about the disproportionate effect this is going to have on our children's hospitals and public hospitals that have received a disproportionate amount of medical assistance because they serve a disproportionate number of low-income and moderate-income people. So, the question really becomes: Where is the standard of fairness if the tax cuts still, in the main, go to the very top of the economic population and at the same time the benefits don't go to many, many hard-pressed families? We have not invested, in this budget agreement, one penny in rebuilding crumbling schools. As it turns out, families with incomes under $16,000, with children, receive no help by way of the child credit. Those students from families with incomes $23,000, $24,000, $25,000 a year are not going to benefit from the Hope scholarship unless it's a refundable tax credit. We are not investing in the schools, and at the same time we don't even have the distributional data on who exactly is going to benefit from these tax cuts. So I count myself as a skeptical Senator. And if I was going to be voting today, I would vote against this package. I do not think it meets the Minnesota standard of fairness. I think we should do better. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. SHELBY addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair and thank my colleague from West Virginia.