Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I have much more to say, but I believe my colleague from North Carolina wants to speak now and I will wait and follow or respond to him.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, last year the Congress made a commitment to fight the epidemic of violence against women and children when we passed the historic Violence Against Women Act. This commitment must not be forgotten as we debate welfare reform. Yet, the bill that we have before us does not contemplate even for 1 minute that many women are on welfare because they have escaped violence in their homes. Some of the studies that have been done show that as many as 60 percent of welfare mothers are women who were battered, women who have left a very dangerous home. The last thing we want to do is force those women back into those homes. For many of these women, welfare is the only alternative, for some support it is the only alternative, for some public financial support for themselves and their children is the only alternative to a very dangerous home. Domestic violence is one of the most serious issues our country faces. I wish I did not have to say that on the floor of the Senate, but it is the case. It knows no borders, neither race, gender, geography nor economic status shields someone from domestic violence. Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten by a husband or a boyfriend every 15 seconds. Over 4,000 women are killed every year by their abuser. Every 6 minutes a woman is forcibly raped. The majority of men who batter women also batter their children. A survey conducted in 1992, Mr. President, found that more than half of battered women stayed with their batterer because they did not feel they could support themselves or their children. We do not want to put women in a situation where they have to stay in an unsafe home where their lives are in jeopardy, where their children's lives are in jeopardy because of a piece of legislation we passed. Mr. President, this amendment allows an exemption for women who come out of these kinds of homes who have had to deal with this kind of physical violence, and it allows States to exempt people who have been battered--it could be a man; usually it is a woman--or subjected to extreme cruelty from the strict new rules that we have within the welfare system without being penalized for meeting the participation rate. Mr. President, this amendment allows States to modify or to exempt women from some of the requirements in this bill. Monica Seles, the tennis player who was stabbed took 2 years before she could get back to playing tennis. Just imagine what it would be like for a woman who had been beaten over and over and over and over again and finally left that home with her children. How long does it take her to mend? Do we want to say she has to work or she is out? Two years and she is out? It may take a longer period of time. This amendment says we ought to establish at the national level some overall standards so that States will exempt from some of the provisions of this piece of legislation women and children who come out of these circumstances. Mr. President, the term ``battered'' or subjected to ``extreme cruelty'' includes physical acts, sexual abuse, neglect or deprivation of medical care, and extreme mental abuse. But we leave it up to the States to define those terms. But what we are saying is this is an epidemic. We made a commitment last year. We do not want to force a woman and her children because of their economic circumstances back into a brutal situation, back into a home which is not a safe home, but a very dangerous home. We have to provide some protection. That is the reason for this general guideline that we establish at the national level and then allow States to go forward. And it is extremely important that States be allowed to do so. Otherwise, they will be penalized for not reaching their employment goal. Right now a State has no incentive to exempt a mother who is faced with these kinds of conditions because that State is trying to meet that work participation rate. This amendment says States ought to be allowed that exemption or modifying it. For example, maybe a mother can meet the 2-year requirement. Maybe she cannot. It is shocking, I say to my colleagues, because they go into a job training program they have trouble with their abuser. So maybe she cannot do that or maybe she can. Maybe the 5-year requirement does not work. We are talking about women and children who have lived through, if they are lucky enough, to have lived through nightmare circumstances. So I certainly hope the Senate will have the compassion, and the Senate will have the commitment to women and children to allow this very, very important amendment to pass with this very important exemption. I yield the floor. Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for gaining order in the Chamber. Mr. President, I will speak for a while and then I really would like to defer to my colleague from Washington, Senator Murray. Then I will complete my remarks. Mr. President, could I have order in the Chamber, please?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2584 on behalf of myself and Senator Murray. Amendment No. 2584

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. I apologize to my colleague from North Carolina. I thought he was here to debate my amendment, and I did not want to keep him waiting. Mr. President, let me just read a few examples that I think tell the story. Linda Duane from Edison, NJ. Linda is a 38-year-old mother of five. Her ex-husband was a police officer. He was abusive toward her. In 1982, the abuse led her and her husband to separate. ``At that time,'' she says, ``domestic violence laws were not set up to protect women; they protected him.'' She was forced to move into her mother's home and she started to receive welfare. She had married right out of high school and never worked outside her home. When her divorce came through she paid back all the welfare payments. For five years she was alone and on her own, but she did not get any counseling for her previous abuse. She became involved in an even more abusive relationship. She later separated from him but he continued to stalk her. He came to her place of employment and she was subsequently suspended from her job for a week. He hung himself the next week on her porch while her children were inside the house. She lost her job the next day because she was told she needed to receive mental help before she could return to work. She lost her home and ended up in a battered women's shelter and again began to receive benefits. She is currently in transitional housing where she is trying to put her life together. She just finished some college classes and hopes to return to school this fall. Mr. President, another woman from St. Paul, MN, Fran Stark. Fran, who I must say is quite a success story, is currently the office manager for TRIO and tutor coordinator for Student Support Services at the University of Minnesota. She married the year after she graduated from high school. But after 16 years of an abusive relationship she divorced her husband. That left her with two children and very few job skills. She went on welfare. She enrolled her son in Head Start and became involved with parent training courses there. She has since enrolled at the University of Minnesota and is almost done with her course work to get her bachelor's degree. Lisa Yost from Wilmington, DE. Lisa is a single mother. She has been on welfare since her daughter was born. The father of her child was unemployed and very abusive. After 3 years she could not take it any more. She had him arrested in 1993 and went to a shelter. She went on welfare and started to take her life back. She started school to get her GED. She testified that, Without welfare I would not be able to maintain my apartment or provide day care for my child. Food stamps help feed my family and we relied on Medicare while I am attending school. The abuse I suffered lowered my self-esteem which kept me from achieving any goals for myself and my child. Healing took time, counseling and a lot of effort from myself . . . Without the financial assistance of AFDC I would not have been able to get my life back on track. Mr. President, what this amendment says one more time is let us not have a one size fits all welfare system. Let us at least make some commitment that there will be some compassion built into this piece of legislation. Again, I say to my colleagues, all you have to do is spend some time with families that have been through this violence. Monica Seles took 2 years to go back to the tennis court because of what she had to deal with. Imagine what it would be like to be beaten over and over again. How long does it take to heal? What we are saying is that this piece of legislation does not take into account any of these circumstances for women and their children. What we are saying is that we set at the national level an exemption to the rules. Then we let States decide how to implement this and we make sure that no State, loses sight of this kind of an epidemic that we are faced with in this country and, no State is penalized for making sure that we do not take women who have been receiving some assistance and force them back into violent homes. If this amendment does not pass, that is precisely what we are doing with this piece of legislation. Again--and my colleague from Washington did a very fine job of really stating the case--it just takes time. If you [[Page S 13527]] go to visit shelters, many of the women and men that work in the shelters will tell you that over 60 percent of the women who try to find shelters have to be turned away. You are now on your own. You have been beaten. You suffer from the equivalent of post-traumatic stress syndrome. You are frightened. You are scared. Almost all of your confidence has been beaten out of you or you feel like a failure. And I again remind my colleagues, every 15 seconds a woman is beaten by a husband or a boyfriend. Over 4,000 women are killed every year by their abuser. Every 6 minutes a woman is forcibly raped and over 60 percent of welfare mothers come from these kinds of abusive situations. We have to have some exemption. So my amendment specifically says, Notwithstanding any other provision of this bill, the applicable administering authority of any specified provision shall exempt from (or modify) the application of such provision to any individual who was battered or subjected to extreme cruelty if the physical, mental, or emotional well- being of the individual would be endangered by the application of such provision. That is legalese. What we are saying is that a State can establish the criteria of what is abuse or extreme cruelty. But States must not be penalized when they make exceptions for the victims of domestic violence. They do not have to count these victims in their calculation of participation rates. Mr. President, there was a study of a training program in Chicago that found that 58 percent of its participants were current victims of domestic violence, and an additional 26 percent were past victims. So what happens, to give an example, when a mother now tries to go into a job training program to move into the work force, but the confidentiality she needs to be safe from her husband is breached, or for her boyfriend who is fiercely possessive and angry because she is now in a job training program. And many women get beaten up because they go into these job training programs. We are going to have to take some kind of an allowance. There has to be some sort of an allowance for these kinds of special circumstances. Mr. President, do we want to say after 5 years no more assistance and you have got to go back into this kind of home regardless of the circumstances? What happens if a woman cannot find a home? What happens if she cannot go into a job training program, no fault of her own? What happens if her children who were also beaten or who saw their mother beaten over and over and over again and are emotionally scarred and she needs to spend more time at home with those children? What happens, Mr. President, if she has to leave the State to get away from her batterer because she is not safe in that State, which means she has to essentially uproot herself, go to another State, start her life all over again, which makes it much more difficult, we all know, to find a home, to find a job, to get back on your own two feet? Mr. President, if we were going to say that a young mother under 18 years of age should not automatically assume that she can set up a separate household and receive full support. She should stay with her family. Fine. But what if she is in an abusive home? What if she herself has been battered? Do we want to force her back into that home? Do we want to say that is the only place she can be? Mr. President, there are many other examples that I could give. But as we search for solutions that will help women and children escape poverty, we must understand the violence that exists in the lives of many economically vulnerable women and their children. And this whole debate on welfare reform that we have had is just one more glaring example of the lack of awareness, I think on our part, unfortunately, and understanding of domestic violence. The whole community has to be there to support these women and their children. Otherwise, they are not going to have the opportunity to become safe, and then to become strong and independent and healthy families. But the burden cannot just be put on the mother. It seems to me that this debate is the same old ``it's not my business'' excuse. But it is our business. We must all be involved. Domestic violence is a root cause of violence in our communities, and we must do everything we can to end the cycle of violence. And I will tell you right now, this will not be real welfare reform if it is one- size-fits-all, if we do not at least set some sort of national standard, giving States maximum flexibility to make sure that there is an exemption for women and children who come from such families, or at least some modification. I say to my colleagues, do not put women and children in a situation where they have no other choice but to go back into a home where their very lives are at risk. Unfortunately, that is not melodramatic. I know this. I know it from the work that Sheila, my wife, and I do in Minnesota with so many women and children who have been victims of domestic violence. We just lost sight of this. Last year we passed the Violence Against Women Act. In one short year, has so much changed that we are no longer willing to look at these special concerns and circumstances of the lives of these women and these children? Mr. President, this is an amendment that deals with the protection of battered individuals. Usually they are women and children; sometimes men. This is an amendment that I think builds into this piece of legislation an extremely important exemption. It is an amendment, if passed, which will be nationally significant because the U.S. Senate will be saying that we understand the magnitude of the problem of domestic violence, of family violence in our Nation, that we understand that in this welfare reform bill there ought to be some sort of allowance set at the national level with States having maximum flexibility so that we do not lose sight of the fact that all too many of these welfare mothers having come from violent homes, having been battered, they may not be able to adhere to all these requirements. And we need to allow for that. We need to have either an exemption or some kind of modification, letting States administer it. And, Mr. President, if we do not pass this, we are unwittingly going to put many women in a situation where they are going to have to return to that violent home, to that dangerous home, because they have no other alternative. We are cutting them off the welfare. And the welfare was the only alternative they had to that abusive relationship. We cannot go backward in that way. Mr. President, I do not see anybody here on the floor that seems interested in debating me on this. For tonight, I will take that as a sign of unanimous support. But I leave the floor full of optimism that I will get good bipartisan support for this amendment. I would yield the floor to my colleague from North Carolina. Mr. FAIRCLOTH addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thought my colleague was here to debate my amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Right. Let us just say--let us just understand this, there is somewhat of an inverse relationship around the country between level of benefits and number of children per family. Those States which have the lower level of benefits tend to have the families with the larger number of children. Now, what does that do to the argument of my colleague from Texas about how it is the dollars that cause all of this? Well, he is not here. But you know, for the record, as we say. Finally, Mr. President, as to this whole argument that--as I listened to my colleague conclude--that really what this debate is about is a difference between those who take the moral high ground and push through these changes, versus those who, I guess the flip side of the coin is those who do not take the moral high ground. On that note, I just would like to suggest two final points. One, I said it once before on the floor, as I listen to some of my colleagues talk about welfare, I get the impression that they are trying to make the argument that welfare causes poverty, that food stamps cause people to not have enough money to purchase food. It is like they mix up the independent and dependent variables. It is like arguing Social Security causes people to get old. People become eligible for welfare because they are poor. Or quite often you have two parents, and then there is a divorce and then the woman is on her own with children, and she looks for some support for herself and her children. And 9 million or so of the 15 million are children. So, frankly, this argument that this is the high moral ground--I think when all is said and done, ultimately what it amounts to is taking food out of the mouths of children. That is no high moral ground position. [[Page S 13514]] I am sorry my colleague from Texas is not here. Maybe he will come back. This whole business of somehow the welfare programs cause the poverty is ridiculous--we expanded food stamps and we did not expand hunger. I said this before on the floor of the Senate, but let us be clear about our history. Richard Nixon, a Republican, established Federal standards for food stamps because in the mid and late 1960's there were the Hunger USA, CBS and Field Foundation studies and pictures of children with distended bellies and malnutrition and hunger in America. And so we expanded the Food Stamp Program. And now we do not have the scurvy and now we do not have the rickets and now we do not have all the hunger and malnutrition. But somehow, according to my colleague from Texas, these programs have brought about all this damage to low- income people, to poor people, mainly, I am sorry to say, women and children. It is really quite a preposterous argument. Mr. President, there is a difference between reform and reverse reform. And it is absolutely a great idea to enable a mother or a father to be able to move from welfare to workfare, a good job, decent wage, affordable child care. That is not what this has been about. So I would not want to let my colleague get away with his argument about a high moral ground. I see no high moral ground in punishing children. I see no high moral ground in taking food out of the mouths of hungry children. I see no high moral ground in essentially targeting those people who are the most vulnerable, with the least amount of political clout and making them the scapegoats. And you know what, by way of conclusion? The sad thing is that I sometimes think that part of this agenda is to essentially say to those people in our country who feel all the squeeze, middle-income people, working people, if we just bash the welfare mothers and do this and do that and make these cuts and those cuts, then the middle class will do well economically. There is no connection whatsoever. My colleague from Texas--and I promise my other colleagues on the floor, this is my last point--keeps putting apples and oranges together. And I heard $170 billion or some figure like that being quoted as money spent on welfare. I do not know exactly what he is talking about. Is he talking about aid to families with dependent children? That is what we are debating. I guess he added food stamps. He probably had to add Medicaid to get there. If he is talking about Medicaid, everybody understands that well over 60 percent of Medicaid is not welfare mothers, it is elderly people. Some are our parents and grandparents who at the end of their lives, because of catastrophic expenses, lost all their resources and now, because they are poor, they are eligible for Medicaid and nursing homes. And God knows what else he lumped into this figure. So let us be accurate about this as we make these decisions. I yield the floor. Mr. BREAUX addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I actually came to the floor to introduce an amendment that I will get to later on that I think will be important to colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make sure that in situations where you have violence within a home we give States the room to give single parents, usually women, an exemption from some of the requirements if that is the only alternative to make sure that they are safe. We do not want to force women back into very dangerous homes. Mr. President, I was listening to my colleague from Texas, and I just have to respond. Let me come back to some unpleasant facts which I think are important because we ought to be making policy on as solid a basis of information as possible. First, actually, I kind of did my own survey in Minnesota, which, I say to my colleagues, was really startling. I try to go to a school about every 2\1/2\ weeks during the school year, and I was in an inner-city high school, South High in Minneapolis. And actually a young woman about age 16 asked me--I guess she heard about action in the House--she said to me, ``Are you in favor of denying welfare benefits to a young woman or girl under 18 years of age if she has a child?'' I said, ``Well, I will answer that question but first let me ask you and let me ask all of you who are here in this assembly''--there were about 300 or 400 students. I did not editorialize. In fact, I tried to actually stack it in the other direction. I said that many Representatives in the House of Representatives have said, look, when a youngster, a young woman knows that she can get on welfare and have welfare assistance, this is what encourages out-of-wedlock births. And people are very serious about dealing with this problem, as I think all of us are in this Chamber. Then I said, ``How many of you would agree?'' No one. Mr. President, we are talking all about these young people. Has anybody asked them about what the causes are? The question is, why do children have children? But has anybody asked any of these young people? I do not think this amendment is connected to that reality at all. Then I went to a suburban high school in White Bear Lake, and I asked the students the same question, expecting a very different response. Then I went to two other suburban communities. Then I went to about three other schools in small towns. Cross my heart and hope to die on the floor of the Senate, never more than about 5 percent of the student bodies, the assemblies, agreed. In fact, I found these students were kind of yelling at me, not out of anger but they were saying, ``Are you people crazy? This is why you think young people are having children? This is why you think there are births out of wedlock? These are our friends. We know what goes on. Nobody is thinking about welfare. Nobody knows what it is. Nobody is thinking, `Well, if I get pregnant, then I do not have to worry because I get AFDC and I can move out of my home'.'' I heard all sorts of other reasons given that you might agree or disagree with. But I want to tell you, talk about a disconnect. The very people that we say we are concerned about, the very people in whose name we pass this legislation, allegedly for whose benefit we pass this legislation, say, ``Are you crazy? This has nothing to do with this problem,'' which is a serious problem. That is my first point. Please remember that. Now, maybe other Senators in here in the Chamber have gone out and met with lots of young people and have asked them. And if you have received a very different response, please tell me. But I have made it my business to spend a lot of time with a lot of young people, inner city, suburban, small town, rural, and that is not what they say. It does not make any sense to them at all. Maybe we ought to listen to them. Maybe we ought to ask them. Maybe we ought to know more. That is my first point. My second point--and I will do this briefly, I say to my colleague from New York--I am sorry the Senator from Texas has left the Chamber. I always feel uncomfortable, because you try to have debates--people give a speech and then they are gone, and you feel like you are attacking someone behind their back. I am not making an attack. I put it more in the form of questions. The problem with the analysis about this--about all of these mothers who are having all of these children--and this is a terrible crisis in our country--is again--and I have heard the Senator from New York say this over and over again, the typical family is one woman, two children. Seventy-five percent of the AFDC families have two children, one parent. That is what it is. What are we doing perpetuating the same stereotype? In the last 20 years it has not gone up. We do not have larger families. As to this economic rationality argument that it is the money that causes young people to have children, there is no evidence of that at all. As for this argument, I think--and I would have to defer to my learned colleague from New York--but I think that if you look around the country, State by State, I do not think there is any direct correlation between level of benefits and number of children. Is there? I mean in some States----

Mr. WELLSTONE. Well, that is what I thought my colleague would say.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, in a minute, I cannot even do justice to the point I will try to make. What has cropped up in this debate I think is a very interesting argument, which is all too often some of my colleagues will say, well, look, if you have a family with an income of $35,000, maybe two parents, they are paying for child care, why should we talk about investment of resources for affordable child care for welfare mothers? I do not know why we are paying off middle-income and moderate-income citizens versus low-income women. We should focus on what is good for the children. The fact of the matter is our country has not made a commitment to affordable child care. It is a shame. This is a perfect example of where we could allocate some of the resources at the Federal level and decentralize it and let all the good things happen at the community level, at the neighborhood level --be it for low income, moderate income, middle income--with some sort of sliding fee scale. That is really the direction we ought to go, not in the direction of not investing resources in child care and therefore putting mothers in a difficult position, and most important of all, punishing children. This is a very important amendment which really kind of is a litmus test as to whether we are serious about reform as opposed to reformatory. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this amendment would provide a direct spending grant to States of $11 billion over the next 5 years, which is precisely the amount that HHS estimates the child care would cost under the Dole bill. I say to my colleague from Utah and I say to the rest of my colleagues, as well, that you cannot have real health care reform, as opposed to what I describe as reverse reform, which is what we have right now with the Dole bill, unless you have a commitment to family child care. This amendment really invests the necessary resources. Mr. President, there have been any number of different studies in Minnesota, and I cite one study by the Greater Minneapolis Day Care Association in 1995. I am not even going to go through all the statistics because sometimes I think our discussion on the floor of the Senate becomes too cut and dried when we just focus on statistics. The long and the short of the study is that there are many families, single-parent and two-parent families, that really are doing everything they can to get on their own two feet and be able to work. The problem is affordable child care. In cases of a single-parent family--and when we talk about welfare families, we are talking in the main about a family with a woman as a single parent. I wish men would accept more responsibility. I know the Chair agrees with me 100 percent on that. In the case of a single- parent family welfare mom, quite often the pattern over a period of time is that a mother will move from welfare to workfare. But then what happens is the cost of child care is so prohibitively high or it is just so difficult to find the child care in the first place, or the child becomes sick for a week and the mother loses her job, you name it, that she has to then go back to welfare. I am all for the welfare reform. Guess what? It is not just Senators that are for the welfare reform. The citizens that are most for real reform as opposed to something which is punitive and degrading are the welfare mothers themselves, the ones who all too many Senators have been bashing for the last week and a half. Mr. President, this amendment is extremely important. If we want to have the reform, we have to invest the resources into affordable child care. Mr. President, I noticed there is a provision now in the Dole bill which I think is interesting and I think it is relatively important, which essentially says, as I understand it, that if, in fact, the State does not allocate the money or does not have the resources for the affordable child care for the mother, then the mother would not be sanctioned by not taking a job and going into the work force. That makes a lot of sense because these mothers, like all parents, are worried about their children. By the way, Mr. President, if we have silly cutoffs like 1 year, it does not make any sense. I am a father of three children, a grandfather of two, going to be a grandfather of three in the next month or so, and I can tell you that a child at 1 year and 1 week is not exactly ready to clean the kitchen, do the housework, stay at home alone, et cetera. The question is, what happens to these small children? The last thing in the world we want to do is punish children. This commitment of some resources to child care goes some way toward making this real welfare reform as opposed to reformatory; that is to say, something which is punitive and puts children in jeopardy. The second point I want to make, Mr. President, with this provision that is now in the Dole bill, is that as I see it, if this provision is taken seriously, what will happen is a lot of this is just going to be at a standstill because as a matter of fact without the commitment of resources for child care, and we did not have that commitment of resources in the Dole bill--this amendment attempts to invest those resources--a lot of mothers will be in a position back in our States of saying with the long waiting lists already for affordable child care, without the resources to be able to afford it, these are low-income women, they will be able to say we cannot go to work because we do not know what will happen to our children, there is no affordable child care for our children, in which case according to the provision in the bill they would not have to go into the work force. There is some good news to that, because I do not think we should coerce a mother into going into the work force. Taking care of children at home is very important work, whether it is a mother or a father. Without the child care, she cannot do it. [[Page S 13182]] On the other hand, then, the whole promise of this reform of enabling welfare mothers, sometimes welfare fathers, to be able to work becomes a promise that is never fulfilled. This amendment goes a long way toward enabling us to fulfill that promise.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. I say to my colleague from Massachusetts that I will not use any of this time to talk about health care, but I do want to associate myself with his remarks. I think we really will have a nationally and historically significant debate about Medicare and health care policy soon which will be extremely important for this Nation. I hope people throughout the country are very engaged in this debate. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be included as an original cosponsor of the Kennedy-Dodd bill.

Mr. WELLSTONE

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be laid aside and be considered next week.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. Amendments Numbered 2503, 2504, 2505, and 2506 En Bloc to Amendment No. 2280

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I send amendments en bloc to the desk and ask for their consideration.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its consideration.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I am delighted to be an original cosponsor of the bipartisan legislation introduced today by Senators Feingold and McCain, to provide for broad, sweeping reform of the way we conduct and finance congressional elections. I have been proud to work with my colleagues from Arizona and Wisconsin on a number of political reform issues, and was very pleased to celebrate a major victory with them as allies on the gift ban, passed just before the recess. After several years of struggle and controversy in the face of strong and persistent resistance by certain of my colleagues, including last year's filibuster by our Republican colleagues, it was a major victory for reformers. And in my conversations with people back in my State, they recognized its importance and said that it gave them renewed hope that we in Congress might respond to growing demands for political reform at the grassroots. But the gift ban, and the passage of lobbying reform, are only two key elements of the political reform agenda. The more significant reform, in my mind, and the one that will have even more far-reaching consequences for stemming the tide of special interest influence in the political process, is the effort to profoundly reshape the way we finance and conduct political campaigns in this country. For many years, I and others have pushed forward here in the Senate a number of campaign finance reform bills, only to see them die in the face of near-unanimous Republican opposition, including a sustained filibuster against last year's bill. I hope that as this bill evolves, it will serve as the basis for the grand bipartisan compromise on this issue that has so far eluded us. For that to happen, each side will have to consider giving up certain advantages that many believe the current system now offers. Americans are looking for that kind of cooperation and compromise on political reform. They believe it's long overdue. On the first day of this Congress, I reintroduced S. 116, my comprehensive campaign reform legislation, which I believe should serve as a model for real, thoroughgoing reform of our campaign finance system. I said at the time that I hoped we would move forward quickly on real reform, despite the persistent opposition of most of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. That bill has been bottled up by the Governmental Affairs Committee, which has thus far refused to even hold hearings on campaign reform. There have been a number of other campaign reform bills introduced this year, including the version of last year's comprehensive bill introduced by Minority Leader Daschle. None of them have received serious consideration by the committees on jurisdiction either. I hope that additional elements of my bill will be incorporated into the final version of this bill if it moves forward. This bill is not perfect. Some of its provisions I don't support. But even with its warts, I have decided to be an original cosponsor in the hope that it might provide a vehicle for real, bipartisan reform efforts this year. It does provide many of the central elements of any significant reform plan. Its enactment would go a long way toward restoring integrity to our political process. Perhaps most important, it would impose strict limits on the amounts that candidates could spend in their campaigns. That is critical if we are to address the huge amount of big money that pours into campaigns, often from well-heeled special interests. As with my bill, and others, the formula would be based on the voting age population in each State. Candidates who agree to abide by the limit would receive free broadcast time, reduced postage rates, and broadcast discounts as incentives for them to participate. It also contains tough new provisions to ban special interests from bundling contributions, bans contributions from political action committees--with backup limits should the ban be found unconstitutional by the courts--bans incumbent use of taxpayer-paid mass mailings in an election year, imposes tough new limits on so-called soft money contributions that can be used to circumvent Federal financing rules, and prohibits the personal use of campaign funds. Finally, it places a premium on contributions from a Member's own home State, in an effort to ensure that Senators are more accountable to those who elected them than to big-money special interests. It requires that a substantial majority of funds come from one's State, and that would be another big step toward reform. While it is true that this specific provision has often been seen historically as being harder on Democrats than Republicans, I believe this is an important principle that should be preserved in some form as this bill moves forward. As I have said, there are some real problems with this bill, and both of its primary sponsors have acknowledged that. I will only identify a few. For example, if a noncomplying candidate refuses to abide by spending limits, the bill allows an increase in contribution limits for the complying candidate, as a deterrent to nonparticipation. I am very troubled by this provision, because I think it could, in some circumstances, increase individual contribution limits, rather than decrease them, as I would prefer. Last year I offered several amendments to reduce substantially individual contribution limits. I continue to believe that this is the way to go, coupled with other incentives. I hope that we will ultimately provide for another way to offer carrots, and wield sticks, to encourage candidates to comply with spending limits. In addition, the bill provides for a limit on personal funds spent in a campaign to $250,000. I believe this is much too high, which is why I offered an amendment last Congress, approved overwhelmingly by the Senate, to cut this limit down to $25,000. I believe that is where the limit should be set, and I intend to work with my colleagues to reduce that limit. In short, while this measure is not as comprehensive as earlier versions of campaign legislation which I have authored or supported in the past, it would go a very long way toward real reform. I think that as the bill moves forward, it can be improved upon, and I intend to work to do that. But I commend Senators Feingold and McCain for their effort, and I hope the introduction of this bill will help to move us as soon as possible toward a major overhaul of the campaign finance system, which has eluded us for so many years.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. And the Senator is concerned they continue to do the surveys? I do not quite understand the Senator's position.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Does not the Bureau of Labor Statistics--who does the survey right now on unemployment, officially?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. WELLSTONE. What the exception is saying--I agree that in the big cities you have an unemployment rate at 8 percent and many higher. That does not tell us anything about self-employment, part-time workers, discouraged workers, which is much higher. Why is the Senator so troubled by [[Page S 12702]] this when it could be a mother with small children who could be penalized if they live in a community with high levels of unemployment--unofficially defined unemployment? You keep calling that a loophole? Why does he see it that way?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this week I am voting against both of the major Department of Defense spending bills for next year. I am doing so for a number of reasons, including the fact that these bills provide about $7 billion more in defense spending than the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have requested for next year. That's right. Congress this year will approve spending for about $7 billion more than the Pentagon has requested, or than they have indicated they will be able to responsibly use, next year. Coincidentally, perhaps, this is just about the same amount--in Pell grants for students, in Head Start, in substance abuse prevention, in employment and training, in worker protections, and many other key domestic areas--that was recently slashed by the House appropriators for next year. Since my perspective, these are seriously skewed priorities. And since polls continue to show substantial support for bringing down the post-cold-war defense budget, I do not believe they are [[Page S 12674]] the priorities of the vast majority of Americans. Even worse, the two bills increase the President's request for star wars spending by hundreds of millions--in one case, about $770 million--which will spell serious trouble for future arms control negotiations. Following an unsuccessful bipartisan effort before the recess in which I joined Senator Kohl, Grassley, and others to amend the bill to eliminate the overall increase above the President's request, I tried to split the difference, offering another amendment to reduce the increase by only about 50 percent. It too was defeated, as were all other efforts to modestly scale back overall funding in the bill to more responsible levels. I also tried, through numerous other amendments offered with my colleagues, to scale back or eliminate spending on a number of unnecessary or obsolete weapons systems. Most of those efforts were unsuccessful. Given tight funding constraints, continued overspending on defense is unwise, it is irresponsible, and it is a policy which does not serve our real national security interests. If we fail to invest in our children in order to bolster post-cold-war defense budgets, because we were too afraid to thoroughly rethink our real national security needs, and retool our defense budget accordingly, we will regret it for at least a generation. I believe that a time when we are slashing budgets for hundreds of social programs that protect the vulnerable, preserve our lakes and streams, and provide for expanded opportunities for the elderly and the broad middle class, such as student loans, Medicare, and job retraining, it is wrong to increase, substantially, already bloated military spending. In defense, as elsewhere in the Federal budget, there are responsible ways to eliminate wasteful and unnecessary spending; by cutting obsolete cold war weapons systems, imposing money-saving reforms within the bureaucracy, and streamlining procurement policy to make the system more efficient and more cost effective. I have proposed a number of ways to do this in recent months, including scaling back bloated Pentagon travel budgets, which the General Accounting Office has found could provide substantial savings--hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Over and over, these attempts have either been voted down here on the Senate floor, or the bills to accomplish these ends have been bottled up in committee. In the end, there is almost no Pentagon streamlining, no elimination of waste, provided for in this bill. Instead, when faced with difficult choices between competing weapons systems, basic housing improvements for our troops, and other readiness requirements, the committee decided simply to buy all of the big weapons systems, ships, and planes that they could, larding the bill with special interest funds for defense contractors in Armed Services or Appropriations Committee Members' home States, often accelerating purchases not scheduled to be made for many years, if at all. In fact, the purchase of many of these extravagantly expensive weapons systems is actively opposed by the Pentagon, because they have identified higher national security priorities for the funding that is available. I also have serious concerns about the potentially catastrophic arms control consequences of this bill. For example, I voted against even the so-called compromise on the national missile defense or star wars system because I believe that, even though it was better than the original bill, the approach urged by the compromise amendment would seriously undermine the 1972 ABM Treaty, and is likely to jeopardize the nuclear weapons reductions in the START I and II treaties. While some have argued, I think in good faith, that this compromise meets basic arms control and nonproliferation requirements, I disagree. As a practical matter, there is no question in my mind that enactment of this bill would lead us toward near-term deployment of a national missile defense system. It is the latest version of the earlier star wars system that was roundly rejected by most knowledgeable scientists, and national security experts, as a waste of money and a fraud. Senator Warner has been very clear that he believes this compromise will move us along toward rapid deployment of such a system. Since, regrettably, I agree with Senator Warner that that is so, while I commend Senator Levin and others on our side for their efforts to develop the compromise, I could not support the final agreement. I believe that spending scores of billions of additional dollars to deploy an elaborate national missile defense system that's not likely to work effectively, and thus violating the ABM Treaty, to defend against a far-fetched scenario in which a ballistic missile is fired on the United States from a rogue terrorist state, is irresponsible. The more likely means that terrorists might use to deliver such a bomb--in a suitcase placed in some public place, or in a Ryder truck, or in a van parked underneath a building--is a far more serious threat. And that is a threat we can combat for a lot less than $50 to $100 billion. I also believe that the additional funding provided by the bill for hydronuclear testing in Nevada will likely have a profoundly negative impact on the test ban negotiations now underway in Geneva. The French nuclear test detonated in the South Pacific yesterday underscores the urgency of bringing to a successful close negotiations on a truly comprehensive test ban that is enforceable, and that constrains its signatories from further tests. There are a host of other serious problems with this bill, Mr. President, some of which we have tried to address during the debate through various amendments. Virtually none of them have been resolved. I believe that this bill in its current form spends vastly more on defense than we can afford, would threaten longstanding arms control agreements and nonproliferation efforts, and would not be in our national security interests. I hope the President will follow through on his threatened vetoes of these bills. I urge my colleagues to vote against these huge and unwarranted increases in defense spending, as I will. I yield the floor.