Michael Crapo on Welfare & Poverty Republican Sr Senator (ID)

Supports welfare-to-work & block grants

Supports the following principles concerning welfare:
• Provide tax incentives for companies to hire and train homeless people who want to work.
• Increase funding of homeless shelters and low income housing projects.
• Increase funds for housing assistance for welfare recipients who need housing to get or keep a job.
• Provide homeless families with apartment vouchers they can use to supplement the cost of an apartment.
• Continue to give states and local governments responsibility for welfare programs through block grants.
• Maintain current welfare-to-work requirements in order for states to qualify for block grants.
• Convert government-funded low-income housing projects into private housing, managed and owned by the residents.
• Require that unwed teenage mothers live with a parent or guardian (if possible) and attend school to receive benefits.

Voted NO 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.

Tax credits to promote home ownership in distressed areas.

Amends the Internal Revenue Code to permit a community homeownership tax credit based upon an applicable percentage of each qualified residence's eligible basis. Makes such credit available to residences (including factory built homes) located:

1. in a census tract with a median gross income not exceeding 80 percent of the greater area or statewide median gross income;
2. in a rural area;
3. on an Indian reservation; or
4. in an area of chronic economic distress.

Increase the earned income tax credit.

Provisions Relating to Earned Income Credit: Amends the Internal Revenue Code to repeal the supplemental young child credit and revise and increase the earned income credit.

Limit welfare to 2 years & cut welfare spending.

[As part of the Contract with America, within 100 days we pledge to bring to the House Floor the following bill]:

The Personal Responsibility Act:
Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.