Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Is the Senator saying there is a possibility that we would rescind what we have stated is a major provision of this welfare reform bill, namely, the requirement that States extend the Medicaid coverage for a year? Is that what the Senator is saying, that we may very well rescind what we have now passed?

Mr. WELLSTONE. For every Senator that is going to vote on this, I am puzzled. This amendment says: It is the sense of the Senate that any Medicaid reform enacted by the Senate this year should require that States continue to provide Medicaid for 12 months to families who lose eligibility for welfare benefits because of more earnings or hours of employment. That is exactly what we said we are going to do for reform in this bill. Otherwise, there will not be any funding and then this will be truly punitive. So we should go on record voting for what we said we were going to do. I hope every Senator will vote for this amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, how much time do I have left?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this is amazing. I want people in the country to understand this. We have said we are going to have this welfare reform, it is not going to be punitive. We changed this for the better. States will be required to carry Medicaid for 1 year. I have a sense of the Senate that makes it clear that in the Medicaid debate that comes up we make a commitment that we will do what we said we would do. And now I hear my colleague from Pennsylvania say, we may very well turn around and not do that. My amendment asks the Senate to go on record that we will do what we have said we are going to do in this piece of legislation. And now I have colleagues that equivocate on this question and say, you know what? This might be a sham. We say we are going to have transitional coverage to make sure that women and children are not hurt, but that is just for now. When it comes to the Medicaid debate, we may very well take away that funding. I do not think the Senators can have it both ways. Are we not going to live up to our word as is now stated in this provision of this piece of legislation? I hope my colleagues will overwhelmingly support this amendment because this is all about the Senate's integrity. Are we for what we say we are for? Will we live up to our commitment? Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. As I understand the agreement, the time for vote on final passage is still left.

Mr. WELLSTONE. 2505 is fine.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Reserving the right to object, I shall not, I wonder whether on the Wellstone amendment 2503, I say to the majority leader, change that to ``modified.'' I think that is OK with everyone.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, might I ask the majority leader a question? I certainly, first of all, know there has been a lot of difficult negotiation. And I respect that process very much. But as I have listened to the majority leader, was he saying that built into this unanimous-consent agreement would be an understanding that there could be no amendments in the same areas in which you have reached agreement with amendments? And if that is the case, then would Senators have an opportunity to at least, as opposed to that being hammered out back in our offices, have an opportunity to look at what that means?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I know without looking at the areas, it is difficult to say whether you would agree or not. [[Page S 13583]]

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, if I could just say to the majority leader and the minority leader, if you would be willing to give Senators some advance notice as to when you come out with the agreement. I would just like to have those areas and just sort of understand what is in the agreement before agreeing that there would be no amendments in this area. I am sure that I would agree to that, but I would just like to know what it is we are talking about since I was not part of the actual negotiation.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, might I ask the majority leader a question? I certainly, first of all, know there has been a lot of difficult negotiation. And I respect that process.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to send a modified amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. In fact, yesterday I asked my colleague, I said, let us take a look at some correlations State by State. I asked, ``Is there any correlation?'' We learned, in fact, there is an inverse correlation. Those States [[Page S 13561]] with the lowest benefits tend to have families with more children. The lowest benefit States have the highest rates of illegitimate children. So, Mr. President, I think that we are being very reckless with the lives of children. I think what the Senate is about to do over the next couple of days, barring major changes for the better, is very reckless with the lives of children. And in many ways I think it is amounting to nothing more than just bashing because, as I have said before, these mothers do not have the resources to get on NBC, CBS, and ABC and fight some of these stereotypes. We want reform. But I have heard precious little discussion about the whole issue of job training, jobs, affordable child care, and moving forward on health care reform, not just for welfare mothers but other families as well. I have heard precious little of that. So, Mr. President, for me the bottom line is--and I understand the climate. It has been just a one-sided flow of information. I said, earlier, I say to my colleague, I was at the Minnesota State Fair. I love to be at the State fair. Almost half of the State's population is there in 12 days. I like interacting with people. It is my nature to like people. I had lots of people come up to me and talk about welfare. And people really do believe we have to drive all these cheaters off the rolls and slackers back to work. People do not necessarily realize that 9 million of those 15 million on welfare are children. But I think when you talk to people they will say to you we are for the reform but we do not want you to punish children. The direction we are going in is going to punish children. It will-- and I do not exaggerate--end up taking food out of the mouths of hungry children. It is not what we should be about. And if there ever was a moment for the President to show leadership, it is now. If there ever was a moment for the President of the United States of America to show leadership--and leadership to me is calling on people to be their own best selves, not appeal to the fears and to the frustrations of people--and spell out for people the facts and provide an education for people in the United States of America about what real reform would be which would benefit children as opposed to hurting children, it is now. The silence of the White House on this question is deafening. As a Senator from Minnesota, I feel that I owe a lot to the Senator from New York for his courage, his wisdom, his eloquence, and his power. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will be very brief. I thank my colleague from New York. For me, personally, having an opportunity to be on the floor while Senator Moynihan speaks is a real honor. We actually go back a ways--not that we knew each other personally, but I assigned many of his books in my classes, ranging from ``Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding'' to ``The Politics of the Guaranteed Income.'' It is interesting, once upon a time, back in 1970 or thereabouts, we were not on the same side. We had disagreements. He was the one who was nationally renowned then. I was a college teacher and I always respected Professor Moynihan, and Senator Moynihan, for his views. But at this point in time, having just listened to what he said, I cannot even begin to tell him how much respect I have. His voice is a very powerful and eloquent voice. I must say, I think the silence from the White House on this question is deafening. Let me just repeat that one more time: The silence from the White House on this question is just deafening. You just cannot have it both ways, Mr. President. You cannot keep talking about children and you cannot keep talking about how you are for children and turn your gaze away from this process and what we are about to do here in the U.S. Senate. Colleagues are coming in. It may be difficult to take a lot more time. I do not want to delay this process. But as we have gone forward in this debate, I think the thing that saddens me and also angers me-- sometimes I am more saddened than angered, sometimes I am more angered than saddened--is not just the question that Senator Moynihan has raised, which is, we do not know, we are about to make policy without understanding, coming anywhere close to understanding the effects of what we are doing. That is, I think, what George Will was trying to say today. But I also feel, and I will be a little bit more, not harsh, but critical of some of my colleagues, I also feel that all too often Senators have come to the floor and have repeated essentially the same stereotypes. It is not just what we do not know. In fact, we do know some things. It is as if people do not, kind of, want to face up to this at all. All this discussion about out-of-wedlock births and what I consider to be and what I think every colleague considers to be a fundamental problem, a challenge to be dealt with, or question, why children have children, that is a complicated question. That is a complicated question. That is what my colleague from New York is trying to say. But from a lot of the statistics that have been recited out on the floor and a lot of the discussion, you would think that we are talking about exclusively a problem with AFDC. It is societal wide, yet it gets mixed up, apples and oranges, all the time. I have heard figures spelled out on the cost of welfare where I think everything was lumped in. You would think it was the aid to families with dependent children that built up $5 trillion of debt and was responsible for the annual budget deficits and all the rest. This is not true. You would think from this discussion that these enormously high benefits--when not one State has welfare benefits combined with food stamps, even up to the official definition of poverty--were causing women to plan to have more children. But there is no evidence for that at all.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, the amendment I am offering today is designed to address a potentially serious oversight in the majority leader's version of the welfare reform bill which must be clarified. The Dole substitute would repeal the longstanding provision in the current Federal food stamp law which excludes from income measurements any regular Low-Income Energy Assistance Program benefits provided by State and Federal energy assistance programs, such as monthly utility payments. LIHEAP is the major Federal fuel subsidy program, which has in my State been a cold-weather lifeline for vulnerable unemployed people, the elderly, and children for many years. As many of my colleagues know, Minnesota is often called the icebox of the Nation, where bitterly cold weather is the norm. In fact, Minnesota is the third coldest State, in terms of heating degree days, in the country, after Alaska and North Dakota. Especially in cold- weather States like Minnesota, funding for LIHEAP is critical to families with children and vulnerable low-income elderly persons, who without it could be forced to choose between food and heat. The LIHEAP program assists approximately 110,000 households in Minnesota, and provides an average energy assistance benefit of about $360 per heating season. In the frenzy of getting this bill modified in the final days before it hit the floor, as was often the case with many of these so-called reforms, the net may have unintentionally been cast too widely. That is why some have urged that this repeal be corrected and clarified to ensure that it would only apply to regular energy assistance payments for heating and cooling, such as monthly utility payments, and not to the types of emergency furnace repair or replacement payments, or weatherization, or other similar payments, that are provided to many low-income Americans through State and Federal energy assistance programs. My amendment will do just that. It explicitly excludes energy assistance payments for things like emergency furnace repairs and replacement, and weatherization expenses, from being counted as income for purposes of calculating eligibility for food stamp benefits. Unsafe and inoperative heating systems can pose serious problems, including fires, monoxide poisoning, and other life-threatening hazards. This amendment is designed in part to prevent people in my State, and across the country, from being forced to choose between eating, and heating, when their furnace breaks down or their home needs to be weatherized to protect them from severe cold. It is designed to allow them to make their homes safe and habitable, and protect their families from the cold, when faced with these immediate and urgent needs. Of necessity, my State has a strong and vital weatherization program, though efforts to slash LIHEAP funding over the years have required them to scale back substantially the services they can provide and the numbers of Minnesotans they can serve. Vastly more people in my State are eligible for LIHEAP than can be served in any given year. And these are very low-income people, including many seniors on fixed incomes. More than two-thirds of LIHEAP households have annual incomes less than $8,000; more than one-half have incomes below $6,000. Further, the average LIHEAP recipients spend 18.4 percent of their income on energy, compared with 6.7 percent for all households. While there are other provisions of the Food Stamp Act which could be construed to exclude lump sum payments for things like emergency furnace repairs and replacement, and weatherization, I wanted to make certain that an explicit exclusion was contained in this bill for these kinds of expenses, to avoid any potential confusion or ambiguity on this matter down the road. I appreciate the support of Senator Feingold, and his work on this amendment, and I am grateful that my colleagues from Indiana and Vermont are willing to accept the amendment. Very simply, then, my amendment makes explicit an exclusion for certain State and Federal energy assistance payments, including those made to repair or replace broken furnaces, or to [[Page S 13574]] weatherize homes by weatherstripping leaky windows and doors, by installing insulation, or by taking other steps as necessary to protect families from the cold. By excluding from income measurement all such one-time repair or weatherization payments, as distinguished from regular, ongoing LIHEAP utility payments, from the calculation of eligibility for food stamp benefits, of course I do not intend to have counted as income assistance payments made in situations where a family's furnace may need repair more than once in a winter, or may need certain types of weatherization more than once in a year. It is basically to exclude from income calculation energy assistance payments or allowances that are occasional and urgent, like a furnace repair, not those which are regular and ongoing, like a regular LIHEAP subsidy. It is very simple, and will ensure that families are not, by a quirk of the bureaucratic rules, forced off the food stamp rolls because their furnace explodes, or goes off in the middle of a dark, cold night, and they replace it with help from LIHEAP. This amendment will prevent this bizarre result. When it is 30 degrees below zero, Mr. President--not uncommon in my State--that is a real emergency. And it must be dealt with immediately. We should make sure we do not build into the system disincentives for people to get furnaces fixed in a crisis, or incentives for elderly people or parents to risk themselves and their families in dangerous situations with unventilated space heaters or other hazards, simply because they are unable to afford, for example, modest furnace repairs. As my colleagues from cold-weather States know, furnace repair and replacement can be very expensive, often costing several thousand dollars. This large and unexpected expense should not knock otherwise eligible families off the food stamp rolls simply because they need help for LIHEAP. We do not want to have people heating their kitchens with their stoves, or with leaky and dangerous kerosene space heaters, or with charcoal grills--all of which is done--because they could not afford to get their heat turned back on, or their furnace repaired or replaced, in the face of bitter cold weather. Each winter we read in the papers of people who die in such tragic situations. We must do all we can to ensure that does not happen, and this amendment takes another step in that direction. Finally, let me say that I am still very concerned about the impact of the general provision in this bill, which repeals altogether the exclusion for ongoing, regular LIHEAP fuel subsidies for food stamp calculations, on thousands of people in my State. In Minnesota, LIHEAP does not even come close to paying the average $1,800-$2,000 costs of heating a home in the winter; people are still carrying most of these costs. But this particular amendment is crafted more narrowly, to meet the objections of those who insist that the general LIHEAP exclusion for food stamps be repealed outright. It is designed to make explicit an exclusion for that narrow category of energy assistance payments that are for the purposes I have described. I believe it is a real improvement to the bill, and I urge its adoption.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I am pleased today to join Senators [[Page S 13566]] McCain and Inouye as a cosponsor of an amendment that would further the goals of strengthening child support enforcement activities by encouraging State governments with Indian tribes within their borders to enter into cooperative agreements for the delivery of child support enforcement services in Indian country. Mr. President, this amendment would give the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, in specific instances, the authority to provide direct Federal funding to Indian tribes operating an approved child support enforcement plan. This approach is consistent with the government-to-government relationship between tribal governments and the Federal Government. Further, this approach to child support enforcement in Indian country is supported by the National Council of State Child Support Enforcement Administrators. Mr. President, title IV-D of the Social Security Act was enacted to assist all children in obtaining support and moving out of poverty. Yet it has been of little assistance to Indian children residing in Indian country because under title IV-D, only States are eligible to receive Federal funds to operate title IV-D programs. The regulations implementing this act restrict States from providing services to Indian children on reservations. State child support program administrators have attempted to meet the goals of child support enforcement by extending their efforts to Indian country, but the administrative and jurisdictional hurdles have made it all but impossible to get these services to need Indian children. Finally, Mr. President, in 1992, the Interstate Commission of Child Support Enforcement recommended that the Congress address this problem through Federal legislation. It is time for America's neediest children to receive child support enforcement services. amendment no. 2589

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I shall be brief because I believe we have now worked this out and that this amendment will be accepted. I am in fact very pleased about it. Mr. President, let me just for a moment kind of spell out for my colleagues what this amendment does. Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten by a husband or a boyfriend in the United States of America. That is a horrible statistic. But unfortunately, it is a fact. Over 4,000 women are killed every year by their abuser and every 6 minutes a woman is forcibly raped. My concern, when I introduced this amendment last night with Senator Murray, was that with our various requirements we would not unwittingly put States in a position where they essentially end up forcing women back into very dangerous homes. In other words, the way to summarize it, it took Monica Seles 2 years to get back on the tennis court. Imagine what it would be like if you were beaten over and over and over again. When would you be able to get into a job program? When would you be able to get back on your own two feet? Quite often children are also severely affected by this. My amendment allows States to exempt people who have been battered or subjected to extreme cruelty from some of these rules that we now have within the welfare system without being penalized for not meeting their participation rate. In other words, if States want to make an exemption for a woman, or sometimes a man, who has come from a very violent home and has been battered, a State will be able to do so and a State will be penalized in no way. Mr. President, this is extremely important because I believe that in order for us to make sure that we do not send battered women back into violent homes, States absolutely have to be able to do this without being penalized in any way, shape, or form. I also believe this amendment being passed will enable our States to put a focus on this question for not only battered women shelters and the advocates, but I think increasingly the larger number of citizens. So I thank my colleagues for accepting this amendment. I yield the floor. Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair. Does the Senator wish to urge adoption?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I do. [[Page S 13562]] I urge adoption of my amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I object for the moment.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. No. I am sorry.