Mark Warner on Welfare & Poverty Democratic Jr Senator; previously Governor

Expand enterprise zones

Housing vouchers & tax incentives against homelessness

Supports the following principles regarding the US welfare system.
• Provide tax incentives for companies to hire and train homeless people who want to work.
• Require that unwed teenage mothers live with a parent or guardian and attend school to receive benefits.
• Provide rent or housing supplement vouchers for low-income families.
• Provide homeless families with apartment vouchers they can use to supplement the cost of an apartment.

Require work to receive welfare benefits

Supports the following principles regarding the US welfare system.
• Provide child care services to welfare recipients who work or attend school.
• Impose a two-year limit on welfare benefits for recipients who are able to work.
• Require welfare recipients to accept some form of government-sponsored job after two years if unemployed in the private sector.
• Strengthen child support collection procedures and increase penalties for parents who do not pay child support.

Voted YES on instituting National Service as a new social invention.

Adds to National and Community Service Act of 1990 (NCSA) purposes:
1. providing year-round opportunities in service-learning;
2. involving program participants in emergency and disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery;
3. increasing service opportunities for retiring professionals;
4. encouraging service by individuals age 55 or older and continued service by national service alumni;
5. focusing national service on the areas of national need.

Proponent's argument to vote Yes:Sen. BARBARA MIKULSKI (D, MD): [In developing national service over many years] we were not in the business of creating another new social program. What we were in the business of was creating a new social invention. What do I mean by that? In our country, we are known for our technological inventions. But also often overlooked, and sometimes undervalued, is our social inventions.

We created national service to let young people find opportunity to be of service and also to make an important contribution. But not all was rosy. In 2003, when I was the ranking member on the appropriations subcommittee funding national service, they created a debacle. One of their most colossal errors was that they enrolled over 20,000 volunteers and could not afford to pay for it. That is how sloppy they were in their accounting. I called them the "Enron of nonprofits."

And they worked on it. But all that is history. We are going to expand AmeriCorps activity into specialized corps. One, an education corps; another, a health futures corps; another, a veterans corps; and another called opportunity corps. These are not outside of AmeriCorps. They will be subsets because we find this is where compelling human need is and at the same time offers great opportunity for volunteers to do it.

Opponent's argument to vote No:No senators spoke against the amendment.