Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am saying to my colleague, I am recognized. I intend to offer an amendment. I heard my colleague from Virginia seeking recognition, and if there are a few things he wants to say right now, I will yield for that. Otherwise, I will go forward.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I do not intend to take a long time. I intend to lay out a case for an amendment. I cannot give a time. I cannot do it in 5 minutes. There is no time limit, but I do not intend to be long.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I intend to be finished before that.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Yes.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague from Virginia two things. No. 1, there are two other Senators out here who want to speak briefly. I would be pleased for them to do so--but I do not want to yield the floor--after which I will have the floor. I say to the Senator from Virginia, I do not think I will take a long time. I will help the manager and try to do it in----

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to the Senator from Virginia----

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to the Senator from Virginia, 10 minutes will not be sufficient. I will try to move forward expeditiously. All of us think our amendments are important. I did not come out here intending to speak for hours, but I need to take about 20 minutes to make my case. I do not want to be----

Mr. WELLSTONE. We all come and wait, and we all seek recognition.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I will not because I do not know how long it will take.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I will try to keep it in that timeframe.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield to the Senators from Delaware and Utah, without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am getting ready to send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I just received the amendment. I will be pleased to send the amendment to the desk. I will say, my colleague has a copy.

Mr. WELLSTONE. The Senator does. I will also say to my colleague, I am actually trying to finish up in the next 4 or 5 minutes. It is just sort of a bad habit I have. When I keep getting pressed in the opposite direction, I tend to speak longer. I am not trying to take up time, I am just trying to argue my case, I say to the Senator. Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Michigan for their support. We have had a resounding vote for this amendment before. I want to just keep this before the Senate. Somehow I want to get this policy evaluation done. So I think a voice vote, which means this passes with the full support of the Senate, will suffice. I thank my colleagues for their courtesy and graciousness. I thank the Senator from Virginia for allowing an unlimited amount of time.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, I wish to talk about what this amendment is about. Then I want to also make a couple of other comments. I will try to stay within a reasonable time limit. There have not been very many vehicles out here on the floor --if I say that back in Minnesota, people look for cars or trucks, but what I am saying is that we have not had a lot of opportunity to bring amendments out here that we think are important as they affect the lives of people we represent. This amendment has been passed by the Senate, but every time it gets passed by the Senate, it gets taken out in conference committee. This will be the third or fourth time. I think on the last vote there were over 80 Senators who voted for it. The amendment calls for a policy evaluation, in which I think all of us should be interested. We should care enough to want to know about the welfare bill because this is going to be coming up for reauthorization. In every single State in the country we are going to reach a drop-dead date certain where people are basically going to be off welfare. What this amendment calls for, and I will describe it more carefully in a moment, is for Health and Human Services to basically call on the States to aggregate the data and to get the data to us as to where these mothers and children are now. In other words, we keep hearing about how the rolls have been cut by 50 percent and that, therefore, represents success, but we do not know whether or not the poverty has been cut and we need to know where these mothers are. We need to know what kind of jobs they have and at what kind of wages. We need to know whether or not the families still have health care assistance. There have been some disturbing reports that have come out within the last several weeks that in too many States even though AFDC families--that is, aid to families with dependent children families--by law should be receiving the Medicaid coverage even when they are now working and off welfare, they are not getting that coverage. We need to know why there has been such a dramatic decline in food stamp participation, which is the most important nutritional safety net program for children in the country. There has been somewhere around a 20-percent cut in participation, and there has been nowhere near that kind of reduction in poverty. We need to understand what is happening. Most importantly, I would argue, although one can never minimize the importance of whether or not these mothers are able to obtain even living-wage jobs, it is the whole child care situation. I recommend to colleagues a study that has recently been concluded by Yale and Berkeley which is devastating to me as a Senator. Basically, it is a study of what has happened to welfare children during this period of reform. There have been 1 million more children who have now been pushed into child care. But the problem is that the child care is woefully inadequate and the vast majority of these children are watching TV all day, without any real supervision, without any real education, and therefore, not surprisingly, colleagues, they are even further behind by kindergarten age. What this amendment would do would be to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to report to the Congress on the extent and severity of child poverty. In particular, what we are interested in is what is happening with the TANF legislation. Let me sort of summarize. The amendment would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to submit to Congress by June 1, 2001, or prior to any reauthorization of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act--we ought to have this evaluation before we reauthorize--a report on the extent of child poverty in this country. The report must include, A, whether the rate of child poverty has increased under welfare reform; B, whether children living in poverty have gotten poorer under welfare reform--that deals not with the extent of child poverty but the severity of child poverty--and C, how changes in the availability of cash and noncash benefits to poor families have affected child poverty under welfare reform. In considering the extent and severity of child poverty, the Secretary must also use and report on alternative methods for defining child poverty that more accurately reflect poor families' access to in- kind benefits as their work-related expenses as well as multiple measures of child poverty such as the extreme child poverty rate. Finally, if the report does find that the extent or severity of child poverty has increased in any way since enactment of the welfare reform legislation, the amendment requires the Secretary to submit with the report a legislative proposal addressing the factors that have led to the increase. Let me be clear as to what this amendment is about, why I introduce it to this bill, and why I hope for a strong vote. First of all, what is it about? It is about poor children. Why have I focused on poor children? Because I think that should be part of our agenda. What is my concern? There has been a tremendous amount of gloating and a lot of boasting about how successful this welfare bill has been. I have traveled in the country and spent quite a bit of time with low-income families and with men and women who don't get paid much money but try to work with these families. That is not the report I get at the grassroots level. What reports have come out--I won't even go through all of the reports today--should give all of us pause. Basically, what we are hearing is that there has perhaps been some reduction in the overall poverty rate but an increase in the poverty of the poorest families; that is to say, families with half the poverty level income. What I also found out from looking at some of the data, much less some of the travel, is that there are some real concerns; namely, in all too many cases when these mothers now leave and go from welfare to work, which is what this was supposed to be about, the jobs are barely above minimum wage. When they move from welfare to work, all too often they are cut off medical assistance. Families USA says there are 670,000 fewer people receiving Medicaid coverage and health care coverage because of the welfare bill. When they move from welfare to work, they go from welfare poor to working poor, but they are not being told that they still have their right to participate in the Food Stamp Program for themselves and their children and, therefore, are not participating in that program. When they go from welfare to work, since they were single parents at home, the child care situation is deplorable. It is dangerous. When people keep talking about how great this bill is, and we haven't even done the policy evaluation, and it is coming up for reauthorization, I argue that it is a security issue for poor families in the United States of America. Again, what this legislation calls for is a study of child poverty, both to look at the extent of it and the severity of child poverty, to make sure we get the data, to make sure we have the policy evaluation before reauthorization. There should be support for this because we should be interested in policy evaluation. Again, pretty soon we are basically going to have almost everyone pushed off welfare. Before that happens, before a mother with a severely disabled child is pushed off welfare or before a mother who has been severely beaten and battered is pushed off welfare or before a mother who has struggled with substance abuse is pushed off welfare, and they may not be able to take these jobs--they may not find the kind of employment with which they can support their families--we had better know. I have quoted Gunnar Myrdal, the famous Swedish sociologist who once said that ignorance is never random; sometimes we don't know what we want to know. This is the fourth time I have brought this amendment to the floor. The first time, it was defeated by one vote, although it was a different formulation. The second time, it was accepted on a voice vote. That was my mistake. Then it was quickly taken out of conference. The third time, it passed by a huge vote on a bill that then went nowhere. This is the fourth time. The reason I keep coming back is, I am determined that we do this policy evaluation. Let me give one other example of why I will send this amendment to the desk in a moment. In focusing on this welfare bill, I know there was a conference committee I attended. This was all about an amendment which, again, the Senate passed, but it was taken out in conference committee, where I was arguing that right now it is wrong not to enable a mother to at least have 2 years of college; that she and the State in which she lives should not be penalized on work participation, and that if the State of Minnesota or California or Michigan or Virginia decided it makes sense to let these mothers have 2 years of higher education, that they and their children will be better off; they should not be penalized. I went to the conference committee; it was dropped in conference committee. A number of different members of the conference committee were saying: Wait a minute, this welfare bill is hallmark legislation. It is one of the greatest pieces of legislation passed in the last half a century. President Clinton tends to make the same kind of claim. We can agree; we can disagree. The point is, there ought to be a policy evaluation. There is a lot at stake. What is at stake is literally the health and well-being of poor women and poor children. We ought to at least have this data. We ought to at least make this policy evaluation. We ought to do it before we reauthorize this bill. That is why I introduce this amendment, and that is why in a moment I will send this amendment to the floor. Before I do, I also want to signal to colleagues that there is a report--I think we will have a debate; I don't know whether it will be today or whether it will be tomorrow or when --on missile defense.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I follow the Senator from New Hampshire.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, in many ways I would have liked to have taken an hour to talk about this because I happen to believe that what is happening right now with poor women and poor children is a terribly important issue. I have summarized this amendment. I think about 89 Senators voted for this amendment last time. I hope I will get a strong vote this time. By way of concluding, while I have the floor, I will mention to colleagues, since I know we will have a thoughtful and careful debate on missile defense, there is an excellent study that has come out that I commend to every Senator, done by the Union of Concerned Scientists at the MIT Security Studies Program. The title of it is ``Countermeasures, a Technical Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of the Planned U.S. National Missile Defense System.'' These distinguished scientists argue that any testing program must ensure that the baseline threat has realistically declined by having the Pentagon's work in that area reviewed by an independent panel of qualified experts; provide for objective assessment of the design and results of the testing program by an independent standing review; conduct tests against the most effective countermeasures. It is an excellent analysis of the whole problem of countermeasures--that an emerging missile state could reasonably expect to build and to conduct enough tests against countermeasures to determine the effectiveness of the system with high confidence. We will have an amendment that I plan on doing with Senator Durbin and other Senators, where we will have a very thoughtful debate about the whole question of the importance of having the testing. I just wanted to speak about this briefly. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I will yield to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Tennessee, I am glad to hear him talk about increasing the number of people who are uninsured. With all due respect, I don't hear a lot from Senators on the other side about the need to have health security for all Americans. That, truly, is the unfinished agenda. Secondly, on the playing politics of it, I don't want to turn around and say he is playing politics with it, but people in the country are wondering how long they are supposed to wait. This is all about quality health care. All of our citizens want to be covered, not just the small number in the Republican bill. All of the citizens in our country want to make sure that the doctors are making the decision and there is independent review of their decisions. That is not in the Republican bill. All of the people in our country want to make sure that when they need to purchase prescription drugs or they need to see a specialist, a doctor who can give them and their children the best quality care possible, they will be able to do so. That is not in the Republican bill. We have been waiting and waiting--3 months, 4 months, I don't know how many months--for the conference committee to act. With all due respect, people in Minnesota and people in the country want to bring some balance back into this health care system. They don't want it run by the big insurance companies. They don't want it just run by the big managed care companies. They want us to be responsive to their concerns. This is a vote about who we represent. Do we represent these large insurance companies and large managed care companies, the vast majority owned by just a few large insurance companies, and increasingly corporatize, industrialize, and insensitive medicine or do we support a health care system that is responsive to the people we represent--the people back home, the mothers, fathers, and children who want good quality health care, who want to be able to go to the doctor that will help them, who want good quality treatment when they need it. That is what this is all about--patient protection and protection for the caregivers, the providers, the doctors. Demoralized caregivers are not good caregivers. The reason the AMA and other professionals support this is they want to be able to practice the kind of medicine they thought they would be able to practice when they went to nursing school or medical school. Really, this is a real simple proposition: Are we on the side of the consumers and people back in our homes? Or do we represent just a few large insurance companies who only control most of these big managed care companies? I think we should be on the side of the consumers and families. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I am trying to move things forward. Senator Helms and I are working out language. I think we will have an agreement, but I thought I would start speaking on this amendment so we can move this forward.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this is a sense-of-the-Senate amendment that deals with the importance of condemning the use of child soldiers in dozens of countries around the world. It is also about very important protocol that is being developed and the importance of building support for it and moving forward as expeditiously as possible on this question. Today, there are 300,000 children who are currently serving as soldiers in current armed conflicts. Child soldiers are being used in 30 countries around the world, including Colombia, Lebanon, and Sierra Leone. Child soldiers witness and are often forced to participate in horrible atrocities. I am talking about 10-year-olds being abducted, forced to participate in horrible atrocities, including beheadings, amputations, rape, and the burning of people alive. These young combatants are forced to participate in all kinds of contemporary warfare. They wield AK-47s and M 16s on the front lines. They serve as human mine detectors. They participate in suicide missions. They carry supplies and act as spies, messengers, or lookouts. One 14-year-old girl abducted in January 1999 by the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel group in Sierra Leone, reported to human rights observers: I've seen people get their hands cut off, a ten-year-old girl raped and then die, and so many men and women burned alive * * * So many times I just cried inside my heart because I didn't dare cry out loud. Mr. President, no child should experience such trauma. No child should experience such pain. Last year, I introduced a resolution expressing the sense of the Congress that U.S. policy permit consensus on language on this optional protocol on child soldiers, directing the State Department to work positively to address its concerns, in language within the United Nations Working Group on Child Soldiers. Today I thank the State Department for its work, and I thank the Department of Defense for its conscientious work, and I thank the Joint Chiefs of Staff for signing off on this protocol. I think it is terribly important work. On January 21 in Geneva, representatives from more than 80 countries, including the United States, worked out an agreement raising the minimum wage for conscription in direct participation in armed conflict to 18 and prohibiting the recruitment and use in armed conflict of persons under the age of 18 by nongovernmental armed forces. The agreement calls on governments to raise the minimum wage for voluntary recruitment above the current standard of 15 but still allows the armed forces to accept voluntary recruits from the age of 16, subject to certain safeguards. The Pentagon, and again the State Department, Harold Cohen in particular, have been great to work with. I believe this is a humanitarian crisis that we ought to address now. It is absolutely unbelievable that in the year 2000 we see people as young as age 10 abducted--I have talked to some of the mothers of these children who are abducted--and forced to commit atrocities. It is unbelievable that we see children age 10 cutting off the arms of other people, engaging in murder. It is unbelievable the extent to which young women are abducted, and they themselves are terrorized and raped. This is a practice that takes place in 30 countries around the world involving 300,000 children. Finally, after years of work, the United Nations has put together an important protocol. We are, I believe, close to supporting this. In conclusion, this is just a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that the Congress joins in condemning the use of children as soldiers by governmental and nongovernmental armed forces. We talk about the importance of taking this action. We make it clear that it is essential that the President consult closely with the Senate in the objective of building support for the protocol, and we also urge the Senate to move forward as expeditiously as possible. I think it is important that all of us support this. I urge my colleagues to do so. I want colleagues to know that Congressman Lewis and Congressman Lantos on the House side have a very similar resolution.