Rep. NEAL: I chaired the Democratic position [on 1990s welfare reform]. One of the goals of welfare reform was to move unemployed Americans from welfare to work, and it did work. The legislation has been very successful in meeting that goal. Welfare reform put people back on the work rolls. Welfare rolls have dropped by half, & poverty amongst children has dropped as well.
Reference: Preserving the Welfare Work Requirement & TANF Extension Act;
Bill H.R.890
; vote number 13-HV068
on Mar 13, 2013
Voted YES on instituting National Service as a new social invention.
Congressional Summary:Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act: Adds to National and Community Service Act of 1990 (NCSA) purposes:- providing year-round opportunities in service-learning;
- involving program participants in emergency and disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery;
- increasing service opportunities for retiring professionals;
- encouraging service by individuals age 55 or older and continued service by national service alumni;
- 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.
Reference: Serve America Act/GIVE Act;
Bill H.R. 1388
; vote number 2009-H169
on Mar 31, 2009
Voted NO on providing $70 million for Section 8 Housing vouchers.
Voting YES on this amendment would add $70 million to the Section 8 housing voucher program, funding an additional 10,000 affordable housing vouchers. Proponents of the amendment say: - This amendment would enable an additional 10,000 low-income families to afford safe, decent housing.
- To offset this increase, the amendment cuts a poorly managed computer upgrade program. The committee has been very ingenious in squirreling away money in different accounts and the bill would still provide $94 million in funds for IT projects.
- We have a choice: Do we want to help thousands of families obtain affordable housing, or do we think it is more important to have a somewhat faster computer upgrade in HUD?
- Our amendment does not seek to restore the amount to the amount that the President recommended, which is $144 million more than the committee recommends, it seeks merely to restore $70 million, or about half of what the difference is to what the President recommended.
- This is less than the bare
minimum of what is needed. We have hundreds of thousands of families on waiting lists, waiting up to 10 years for decent housing for Section 8 vouchers.
-
Opponents say:- The existing bill fully funds the renewal of Section 8 vouchers. Additional funds are simply not necessary.
- The cost of Section 8 vouchers are remaining constant and in some markets are actually decreasing. As such, this funding level will provide funds to restore vouchers that may have been lost in recent years.
- The proposed reduction will cause delays in critically needed efforts to modernize antiquated legacy computer systems.
Reference: Department of Housing and Urban Development appropriations;
Bill HR 5576 Amendment 1015
; vote number 2006-267
on Jun 13, 2006
Finish welfare reform by moving able recipients into jobs.
Schwartz adopted the manifesto, "A New Agenda for the New Decade":
Help Working Families Lift Themselves from Poverty
In the 1990s, Americans resolved to end welfare dependency and forge a new social compact on the basis of work and reciprocal responsibility. The results so far are encouraging: The welfare rolls have been cut by more than half since 1992 without the social calamities predicted by defenders of the old welfare entitlement. People are more likely than ever to leave welfare for work, and even those still on welfare are four times more likely to be working. But the job of welfare reform will not be done until we help all who can
work to find and keep jobs -- including absent fathers who must be held responsible for supporting their children.
In the next decade, progressives should embrace an even more ambitious social goal -- helping every working family lift itself from poverty. Our new social compact must reinforce work, responsibility, and family.
By expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, increasing the supply of affordable child care, reforming tax policies that hurt working families, making sure absent parents live up to their financial obligations, promoting access to home ownership and other wealth-building assets, and refocusing other social policies on the new goal of rewarding work, we can create a new progressive guarantee: No American family with a full-time worker will live in poverty.
Goals for 2010 Finish the job of welfare reform by moving all recipients who can work into jobs. - Cut the poverty rate in half.
- Double child support collections and require every father who owes child support to go to work to pay it off.
Source: The Hyde Park Declaration 00-DLC3 on Aug 1, 2000
Sponsored maintaining SNAP nutrition assistance program.
Schwartz co-sponsored House Resolution on SNAP
- WHEREAS hunger is a serious threat to individual dignity, productivity, learning, economic prosperity, health, and development;
- WHEREAS food insecurity means that people face an ongoing struggle against hunger;
- WHEREAS 50.1 million people lived in food insecure households in 2011;
- WHEREAS the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP), established in the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, is the nation's first line of defense against hunger and food insecurity;
- WHEREAS SNAP served more than 47.5 million individuals in October 2012;
- WHEREAS the SNAP benefits average less than $1.50 per individual per meal;
- WHEREAS SNAP participation rises when the economy is weak;
- WHEREAS millions of Americans need to turn to SNAP as a way to feed themselves and their families;
-
Whereas SNAP is an efficient public-private partnership that runs on the regular channels of commerce--regular retail food stores and electronic benefit transfer (EBT) systems;
- WHEREAS every dollar in new SNAP benefits generates up to $1.79 in economi
Source: H.RES.90 13-HRes90 on Feb 28, 2013
Develop a strategy to eliminate extreme global poverty.
Schwartz co-sponsored developing a strategy to eliminate extreme global poverty
A BILL to require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.
Congress makes the following findings:- More than 1 billion people worldwide live on less than $1 per day, and another 1.6 billion people struggle to survive on less than $2 per day.
- At the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, the US joined more than 180 other countries in committing to work toward goals to improve life for the world's poorest people by 2015.
- The year 2007 marks the mid-point to the Millennium Development Goals deadline of 2015.
- The UN Millennium Development Goals include the goal of reducing by 1/2 the proportion of people that live on less than
$1 per day, & cutting in half the proportion of people suffering from hunger and unable to access safe drinking water and sanitation.
DECLARATION OF POLICY: It is the policy of the United States to promote the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.REQUIREMENT TO DEVELOP COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY: The US Government shall develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the US foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by 1/2 the proportion of people worldwide who live on less than $1 per day. The strategy shall include specific and measurable goals, efforts to be undertaken, benchmarks, and timetables to achieve the objectives.
Source: Global Poverty Act (S.2433/H.R.1302) 2007-S2433 on Dec 7, 2007
Page last updated: Jun 22, 2017
