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“RURAL TANF” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2430 on May 14, 2002.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
RURAL TANF
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow this body will take up the reauthorization of the 1996 welfare law. Much has been said about this bill and no doubt debate will go on for some time. However, remarkably little has been said about one aspect of it, the rural aspect.
It will not be surprising to Members of this body that there is a difference between urban and rural areas. In fact, let me just tell my colleagues, 237 out of the 250 poorest counties in the United States in 1998 were nonmetropolitan, and that persists today.
One-half of rural American children and female heads of household live in poverty. Rural workers are nearly twice as likely to earn the minimum wage and 40 percent less likely to move out of low wage, entry level positions. Six out of 10 rural people in poverty do not own a car. The rural urban earning gap persists and actually has widened through the latter part of the 1990s. There is a gap of 73 to 70 percent.
Mr. Speaker, as we look at making work an essential part of the welfare effort, and I believe that work should be, in fact I think work is very honorable and we should encourage everyone to find the satisfaction as well as the responsibility of doing something that is valuable to themselves but also will have income, but the reality is this: Labor markets in rural areas are often very limited. There is a high unemployment rate in rural areas because the opportunities are not there.
So if we are indeed encouraging that more people should work, we need to then speak to putting in the infrastructure for training, jobs, day care and transportation, particularly those areas in the Mississippi Delta, the Appalachia and the Lower Rio Grande Valley and in Indian Country. It is in 240 of those 250 counties I talked about. So there are 240 counties in this country, the poorest counties, indeed will have difficulty finding jobs, maintaining the same work they had 3 years ago. Their unemployment indeed has gone up and the job opportunities have gone down.
The third exemption from time limits for counties with high rates of unemployment failed, let me say that again, failed to address the problem adequately in more rural areas. Official unemployment statistics underestimate the true rate of unemployment. There are many discouraged workers with few opportunities that do not even bother to go to the unemployment office or go seeking assistance because they know there are so little job opportunities. They know jobs do not exist, and therefore they do not even bother.
So if we use the known statistical data, that in itself is false, but also what we do know is that there is a lack of opportunity, and if indeed we wanted to find how States were responding to that, I have just submitted an amendment to the Rules Committee they ought to have to require each State governor to say to the Secretary in their plan how they propose to ensure there are job opportunities or if there are work opportunities, training opportunities, are there day care opportunities, transportation. All of that means new resources. So if we are not making any differential in adding new resources to rural areas, we are putting the governors in the States throughout the United States, putting them in a decisive difficult fiscal position, and we should ask them how they propose to meet that obligation that they are given.
So, in fact, in some rural areas the true unemployment is double. For example, the official unemployment rate of Indian reservations often are 20 and 30 percent. However, according to the Department of Labor, it is sometimes higher than that, and yet we are requiring that individuals in those communities will have the same rate for the very poor.
Therefore, provisions of the legislation that are based on the official statistical data of unemployment is a false premise in order to give the governors the response to make a way. We need to find other ways of speaking to that.
So there needs to be a recognition, Mr. Speaker, that child care that is so essential for mothers to leave their children and go to work, that is not available in rural areas. Unless we are willing to provide for education and training, transportation, day care, the rural community will not be able to respond to the citizens who need that help, and the current proposal that is before this House has nothing in there. In fact, I will be asking for unanimous consent that we add that provision to the bill on the floor.
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