The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S7244-S7247 on May 23, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS
By Mr. McCAIN:
S. 841. A bill to increase the special assessment for felonies and improve the enforcement of sentences imposing criminal fines, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
the crime victims assistance improvement act
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to assist those who are often ignored in our ongoing struggle against crime: the victims: The Crime Victims Assistance Improvement Act increases and improves collection of crime fines which are deposited into the crime victims fund. This fund provides desperately needed help to crime victims across this country.
I am pleased that this legislation has been supported by the National Organization for Victim Assistance, the American Legislative Exchange Council, Crimestrike, and the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
First, this bill doubles the mandatory special assessment charged to every convicted Federal felon. The current special assessment is $50 for each [[Page S7245]] individual felon, and $200 for an organization. The money from these special assessments goes directly into the crime victims fund. So doubling the assessments will double the amount of money going into the crime victims fund.
This means that more rape and assault victims will get counseling, more battered women and children will get shelter, more families of murder victims will get money to defray funeral expenses. It means more help for more crime victims in every State of this Nation.
Second, this legislation increases, to 20 years, the statute of limitations for the collection of these special assessments. Currently, the Government loses the right to collect this money from convicted felons after 5 years, which means vital resources are lost in the effort to assist crime victims. Criminal debtors should not be allowed to get away with defying a court order to pay. Increasing the statute of limitations significantly increases the amount of time that the government has to track down deadbeat criminals and make them meet their obligation.
This legislation also requires an enforceable payment schedule for special assessments, orders of restitution and additional fines charged to convicted Federal criminals. Current law only allows the judge the option of setting up a payment schedule. A mandatory schedule for payment of the money owed will enhance collections and improve debt management. Ultimately, it means more dollars in the crime victims fund.
Fourth, this legislation prohibits delinquent criminal debtors from receiving Federal benefits, such as grants, contracts, loans, professional and commercial licenses and other Federal assistance programs. If convicted criminals are not meeting their financial obligation to crime victims, then they certainly should not be allowed to benefit from Federal assistance programs.
Fifth, the bill addresses a particularly absurd loophole in current law which allows delinquent criminal debtors to collect money from the Crime Victims Fund if they themselves become victims of crime. It is ironic, and yet tragic, when a convicted criminal debtor in turn becomes a victim of crime; but it is unfair that such an individual, who is delinquent in payments to the crime victims fund, and has not made a good faith effort to meet his or her obligation, is allowed to receive assistance from the program.
The intent of this legislation, however, is not to deny needy people from assistance if they are making a good faith effort to meet their financial and legal obligations. Payment schedules certainly could be amended by a court to address exigent circumstances.
Finally, this legislation establishes that crime victim compensation payments shall not be counted as income for purposes of eligibility for unrelated federally-funded general assistance programs.
Let me relate the story of a 2-year-old-boy from Iowa. After his father was brutally, murdered, this boy's mother had no means of support and was placed on AFDC rolls, which qualified the family for Medicaid. The State victims compensation program also provided this young victim and his mother $2000 for loss of support. This one-time compensation payment was considered as income, however, so the Government was forced to cut off this child's Medicaid benefits for nearly a year. This is not right and it must be changed.
Mr. President, crime continues to plague our Nation. Figures from the U.S. Justice Department show that one violent crime is committed in this country every 16 seconds. Yet the unmet need for victim assistance and compensation is enormous. The number of victims' compensation claims has increased by 10 to 20 percent each year for the past 5 years, but many of those claims are being turned down because of a lack of funding.
In my home State of Arizona, we are receiving fewer dollars from the crime victims fund at a time when serious crime is increasing. In 1993-
94, 16 Arizona agencies that applied for crime victim assistance grants received no funding at all. The funding requests that were rejected included victim witness programs, domestic violence agencies, as well as child abuse and sexual assault programs.
The victims compensation system is also overburdened. Families with limited financial resources must face the initial trauma of the crime coupled with the additional concerns of medical expenses, funeral bills and other crime-related losses. We need more resources to help these victims, especially those in financial distress, and the Crime Victims Assistance Improvement Act will help tremendously in this endeavor.
Doubling the amount of special assessments, increasing the statute of limitations on collections, setting up specific payment schedules, and keeping delinquent criminal debtors from benefiting from the crime victims fund are effective methods for channeling money from the criminals who committed the crimes to the victims who are living with the aftermath. We must let criminals know that fine payment is not an option, it is an obligation that they must and will meet.
Mr. President, this legislation enhances collections of criminal debt and improved administration of the crime victims fund to keep pace with the growing needs of crime victims, and I urge timely consideration and passage of this measure.
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By Mr. ASHCROFT (for himself, Mr. Coverdell, Mr. Craig, Mr.
DeWine, Mr. Smith, Mr. Inhofe, and Mr. Kempthorne):
S. 842. A bill to replace the aid to families with dependent children program to the States, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
S. 843. A bill to amend the Food Stamp Act of 1977 to convert the food stamp program into a block grant program, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
S. 844. A bill to replace the Medicaid program with a block grant to the States, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
S. 845. A bill to replace the supplemental security income program for the disabled and blind with a block grant to the States, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
S. 846. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow for charitable contributions to certain private charities providing assistance to the poor thereby improving Federal welfare efforts through increased activity, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
welfare reform legislation
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, as we continue to debate the budget resolution, setting spending levels for the next 5 years, we do so with the knowledge that one of our greatest challenges is moving our Nation's needy from governmental dependence to economic independence. One of our challenges is to ensure that hope and opportunity are defining characteristics of all Americans.
This was the challenge 30 years ago, when the great movement reshaping world politics was the end of colonialism. John Kennedy celebrated the ``desire to be independent,'' as the ``single most important force in the world.'' Eventually this movement revealed its power from Asia to Africa to South America.
The problem with imperialism was not just its economic exploitation. it was its influence on culture. It undermined traditional ways and institutions. It was inconsistent with human dignity.
Why? Because imperialism rewarded passivity and encouraged dependence. It required citizens to live by the rules of a distant elite. It demanded people be docile in the face of a system that they could not change. It was an attack, not just on national sovereignty, but on national character. What our Washington-based welfare system has done, particularly to women and children, has been to fashion a new form of colonialism. It created an underclass that is paid to play by rules that lead to dependence. It rewards behavior that keeps them powerless. It thwarts the efforts of private and religious charitable organizations to care for the needy. It discourages the genuine compassion of the American people. It has waged war against the human spirit.
Our goal in welfare should not be to maintain the underclass as comfortably as possible as wards of the state. Yet that is precisely what has been done. Cash benefits anesthetize their suffering. Food stamps relieve [[Page S7246]] their hunger. Health care and housing are provided. But the hope, dignity, and integrity of independence are forgotten.
Consider, just briefly, what our current welfare system has wrought. The numbers alone are enough to numb the senses. Since 1965, we've spend more than $5 trillion--a cost higher than that of waging the second world war--fighting poverty. Yet today, there are more people living in poverty than ever before, and our safety net has become more like quicksand.
In 1965, when President Johnson launched the War on Poverty, there were approximately 14.7 million children in poverty. They constituted about one of every five children in America. In 1993, there were 14.6 million children in
poverty. They constitute a little more than one in every five American children. Of all age groups, children are the most likely to be poor. In 1991, a study of the poverty rates in eight industrialized nations revealed that American children were almost three times as likely to be poor as children from the other nations studied.
The character of the poverty we face today is a deeper, more entrenched poverty in which generations of people are born, live, and die without the experience of holding a job, owning a home, or growing up with a father's love and discipline.
Go into our inner cities--go just blocks from here--and you will meet a generation fed on welfare and food stamps but starved of nurture and hope. You will meet young teens in their third pregnancy. You will meet children who are not only without a father, but do not know anyone who has a father. You will talk with sixth-graders who do not know how many inches are in a foot, having never seen a ruler, and with first-graders who do not know their ABC's or numbers because no one ever took the time to teach them.
Thirty years ago, Robert Kennedy reflected on welfare and said this:
Opponents of welfare have always said that welfare is degrading, both to the giver and the recipient. They have said that it destroys self-respect, that it lowers incentive, that it is contrary to American ideals. Most of us deprecated and disregarded these criticisms. People were in need; obviously, we felt, to help people in trouble was the right thing to do. But in our urge to help, we also disregarded elementary fact. For the criticisms of welfare do have a center of truth, and they are confirmed by the evidence.
Robert Kennedy's warnings were not heeded.
The political elites that followed him have spent, and taxed, and redistributed wealth beyond the dreams of Roosevelt and Johnson combined. But in the Government's war on poverty, poverty is winning and the casualties are the poor. Hope and opportunity are missing in action. Programs and policies that once were judged by the height of their aspirations must now be judged by the depth of their failure.
I have a belief that is confirmed by the record of our times. It is this: The greatest, most insistent human need is not subsistence, not hand-outs, not dependence, but independence. Not the kind of independence that suggests people do not need one another or that suggests that every man is an island. Quite the opposite, the independence of which I speak is the independence born of economic self-sufficiency and opportunity. The independence to dream, pursue, and fulfill our deepest wishes and our personal potential. This is something that the social architects cannot plan or build. It is not structure, it is spirit. It is something that our welfare system has lacked for at least the past 30 years. It is a reality that we continue to ignore only at our peril.
We stand at a time of unique opportunity. There is a mainstream movement of values sweeping this land. It is a movement reflected on the covers of popular magazines like Newsweek and US News who lament the absence of shame and the lack of fathers.
I believe it is time again to create a welfare system that helps, not hurts those it seeks to serve. That is the standard against which reform must be judged--not some utopian ideal, but the cold, hard realities of our present welfare system.
Today I will introduce the Communities Involved in Caring [CIVIC] Act. We have neither the aspiration nor the expectation that it alone is the long-awaited answer to our welfare problems. But we do believe that it is a significant step toward restoring the opportunities of dignity through independence and the access to the world of upward mobility.
This act is predicated on three fundamental beliefs. First, that States need to be given maximum flexibility in reforming their welfare systems. Second, that our intermediary organizations--especially private and religious charitable organizations--need to be utilized in welfare reform. Third, that intermediary organizations need not only money, but volunteers, to flourish.
block grants
The CIVIC Act block-grants Washington's four main welfare entitlement programs--AFDC, Food Stamps, Supplemental Security Income, and Medicaid--to the States. It does this first by capping the spending on AFDC, food stamps, and SSI at either an average of fiscal year 1992-94 levels, or at fiscal year 1994 levels, whichever is higher. This cap would then apply for the next 5 years. For Medicaid, which is currently growing at rates exceeding 10 percent per year, spending would be capped at a rolling 5-percent increase for the next 5 years.
These programs would then be extricated from their existing bureaucracies--HHS, Agriculture, et cetera--and given to the Department of Treasury to distribute to the States.
Treasury's oversight role would be minimal because the only qualifications on the block grants would be the following. First, States would be required to make welfare recipients work. How best to do that. The nature of the work. The level of participation. All of those issues would be left to the States to determine. Second, States which decrease illegitimacy, using existing governmental statistics, will be able to use a portion of their block grant for elementary and secondary education or any other function they desire.
involvement of intermediary institutions
The CIVIC Act also provides explicit authority for States to contract with intermediary organizations--including private and religious charitable organizations--to help solve the welfare problem.
We have all heard the stories of small organizations that are hugely successful in helping America's poor. Unfortunately, many of those programs have been constrained from receiving Federal funds because all too often those Federal funds would require radical changes in the program--changes that would rob the programs of the very characteristics that make them successful.
Under the CIVIC Act, States would be able to utilize their Federal bloc-grant funds by either contracting with these organizations directly or by giving welfare recipients certificates so that they can choose which programs to get involved in.
tax credit eligibility for volunteering at charitable organizations
The final part of the CIVIC Act makes those people who volunteer at least 50 hours per year, or approximately 1 hour per week, to institutions that serve the needy, eligible for a $500 tax credit for monetary donations to such charitable organizations. Just as welfare recipients should work for their benefits, so our citizenry should work for charitable organizations in order to receive a tax credit. It is all about responsibility. It is all about opportunity.
When he travelled through America more than 100 years ago, the great French observer Alexis de Tocqueville was struck by how caring Americans were for each other. ``The Americans, . . . regard for themselves,'' he wrote, ``constantly prompts them to assist one another and inclines them willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the welfare of [others].'' What this act seeks to undo is 30 years of Washington discouraging that very basic American instinct to help one another.
These ideas are not new ideas. They are, in fact, ideas that have been tried, tested, and found successful. About a hundred years ago in cities like New York, alcoholics and addicts littered the sidewalks. Orphaned children roamed the streets. And if all New York City's liquor shops, houses of prostitution, gambling houses, and other low-life establishments would have been placed on a single street,
[[Page S7247]] they would have extended from Manhattan's city hall to the city of White Plains more than 30 miles away. On that street, there would have been a robbery every 165 yards and a murder every half mile. And in Brooklyn, 1 out of every 10 people got food from public storehouses.
These pathologies met their match through society's intermediary, nongovernmental, organizations. Their warm-hearted and hard-headed approaches helped save women and children and men. As the historian Marvin Olasky notes, ``The solutions these reforms came up with forestalled an epidemic of illegitimacy and saved thousands of children from misery.''
I believe that as we confront our own social pathologies, we must, we must do it the same way--with new ideas for the 1990's that were the standard fare of the 1890's. We must meet our challenges with a greater role for States and a greater role for intermediary organizations--both larger ones like the Salvation Army and the Goodwill and smaller ones like Best Friends and the Sunshine Mission.
So while the CIVIC Act begins the process of moving welfare from Washington to the States, it also begins the vital task of reinvigorating our intermediary organizations--organizations which can help meet people's deepest needs, organizations that we know will help solve our welfare problems.
The change that we want to see will not occur overnight. Neither will it come without hard work and thorough debate. The end of colonialism was not an easy process either. For independence means risk, the sacrifice of security. Economic mobility means work, hard work. But no nation and no people who have ever tasted the sweet fruits of freedom has called for the return of its colonial rulers.
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By Mr. GREGG (for himself, Mr. Reid, Mr. Coats, Mr. Bradley, Mr.
Kyl, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Lautenberg):
S. 847. A bill to terminate the agricultural price support and production adjustment programs for sugar, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
AGRICULTURAL PRICE SUPPORT LEGISLATION
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise today with Senators Reid, Bradley, Coats, Cohen, Lautenberg, and Kyl to announce the introduction of legislation to repeal the sugar program. This legislation will eliminate the U.S. Department of Agriculture's [USDA] price support, subsidized loans, producer assessments, and marketing allotments for sugar.
The sugar program is big government at its worst. At a time when the American people are demanding that the Federal Government assume a more limited role in society, this program goes in the opposite direction. Instead of leaving the sugar industry to market forces, the USDA wields the heavy hand of government intervention.
Why should Congress repeal the sugar program? That is a good question, and I will give you but a few examples:
It has been estimated by the General Accounting Office [GAO] that the program costs consumers and sweetener users an average of $1.4 billion annually. The producers who sell the most sugar reap the biggest benefit. Right now, the world sugar price is half that of the United States.
The sugar program stifles competition. In 1991, the GAO estimated that 42 percent of the program's benefits went to only 1 percent of the growers. The 33 largest sugar plantations receive over $1 million each year.
The U.S. has generally supported free and fair trade. How can we justify artificially inflating the price of a domestic commodity just to enrich and protect a particular industry? This legislation would not impact existing rules on tariffs and quotas. Therefore, there would be no dumping of foreign sugar into the U.S. market.
Like most Americans, I strongly support reducing the Federal budget deficit. Due to import tariffs and a 1.1 cents-per-pound tax on producers, the sugar program operates a no-net-cost to the Federal budget. While this is true, the program costs the American taxpayers
$1.4 billion. The sugar program is a regressive tax, which imposes a much greater burden on those who spend a great deal on consumption. Under the present system, the benefit of reducing the Federal budget deficit is far outweighed by the high cost to the American consumer.
One of the greatest environmental crises facing the State of Florida is the degradation of the Everglades. The Everglades is a national treasure, which is threatened by phosphate and pesticide runoff. The sugar program's continued high price supports have for years stimulated overproduction in the Everglades agricultural area. In effect, the Federal Government has encouraged the destruction of the Everglades through heavy-handed government intervention and misguided attempts to regulate the economy.
The repeal of the sugar program would have a minimal, if any, impact on jobs in the sugar industry. The American sugar industry, the pro-
sugar lobby, has estimated a job loss of 420,000. This is factually and statistically untrue. The Census Bureau and the USDA have estimated that the sugar industry only accounts for 46,000 jobs. In fact, even with the program, sugar industry jobs fell by 18 percent between 1982 and 1992. It is believed by many economists that any job losses in the sugar industry would be offset by gains realized in the sweetener industry.
Mr. President, the time for wasteful and inefficient commodity programs like the sugar program has come to an end. I hope the Senate will move quickly to pass this legislation and send a message to the relatively few that benefit from this program that the American consumer deserves a better deal.
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to rise today to join Senator Gregg and Senator Reid to introduce legislation to eliminate the sugar program. The Federal Government has been meddling in the sugar market for over 200 years, and I believe the time has come to end what has become a wasteful practice.
The supporters of the sugar program argue that the system operates at no cost to the Federal Government, and therefore there is no need to eliminate this harmless program. Technically speaking this assertion is true; the Federal Government does not send checks to sugar growers. But the federal government does artificially raise the price of sugar by limiting imports, and, as a result, American consumers pay an additional $1.4 billion each year for sweetened products, according to the Government Accounting Office. So while Americans may not pay for this program through higher taxes, they do pay for it every time they buy a soda, or a candy bar, or anything else which contains sugar or other sweeteners.
The supporters of the sugar program argue that this program is vital to the livelihoods of family farms. Unfortunately this program, like many other agricultural subsidies, was designed to help family farms, but actually tends to support big businesses. Seventeen of the over 1,700 sugarcane farms received roughly 58 percent of the benefits of this program in 1991. One family in florida receives an estimated $65 million a year as a result of the artificially high prices. Mr. President, this certainly does not fall within my definition of a
``family'' farm.
Finally, the supporters of the sugar program argue that the elimination of this program will kill the domestic sugar industry. While there will likely be some changes to the industry if this program is eliminated, I take issue with the argument that there is no life after subsidies. During World War II, a price support system was established for potatoes. Several years later Congress abolished the program. But the potato industry remains vibrant in the United States to this day. From Maine to California, farmers continue to grow potatoes without the benefit of a subsidy they once enjoyed.
Mr. President, the time has come to end the sugar program. Simply stated, its benefits go primarily to a select few, while its costs are borne by every consumer in America. Because food accounts for a higher share of the household budget of low-income families, these higher costs are especially regressive. For the sake of these families, I hope the Senate will pass this important legislation.
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