Family First Prevention Services Act of 2016

Floor Speech

Each day in America, as many as eight children die at the hands of those who are supposed to be caring for them. Three out of four of these children are under the age of three. Half of them will never reach their first birthday, and countless others of all ages will forever be scarred by abuse and by neglect.

The legislation that we consider tonight is all that remains of a comprehensive child safety bill offered by Senator Ron Wyden and offered by me here in the House last year. I salute his leadership then, and I accept his decision to settle for a small bit of what we sought to accomplish rather than no bit at all.

This year, Senator Wyden put a fraction of our original bill into a proposal to which Senator Orrin Hatch agreed, a bipartisan Family First draft proposal. Today's bill is a fraction of a fraction of our original initiative.

Despite the valiant efforts of many local groups and individuals across Texas, we have a child abuse crisis there. As The Dallas Morning News reported last month: ``Staggering number of Texas children in imminent danger neglected by CPS''--Child Protective Services-- ``investigation shows.''

And the same is true in one State after another. In short, the Republican answer in this bill is to do absolutely nothing with regard to child prevention services in additional resources now, to essentially do nothing about this crisis now, to continue neglecting the neglected this year, next year, and the year after that.

Adoption has proven one way that we can keep children out of the foster care system and in a loving family. I know this is not Mr. Buchanan's personal view, but the only way that House Republicans would agree for us to fund additional preventive services for these children to avoid child abuse--even though that takes 3 long, painful years of delay--is by our cutting about $700 million from adoption.

The other source of funding is congregate or group care. I believe we do need a change in group care, but while agreeing, I note that in Texas last month there were over 60 foster care youth. The only place they could find to sleep was in the State offices of Child Protective Services, and one has to ask about this bill the question of where these children will go if those group facilities are no longer available.

This measure was approved on the same day that the Committee on Ways and Means approved barring over $50 billion for additional tax breaks, and yet not another dime of additional resources to prevent child abuse this year. They demanded that there could be no resources going into child abuse unless it was paid for from other human resources, essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul.

One important aspect of the bill is the kinship provision, that assisting relatives who are willing to raise a child, keep them in a family home so they won't be bounced around from one place to another, that they get some support. I think it is a worthy approach, but it also shows how this House Republican proposal has slashed relief.

This year's bipartisan recommendation by Senators Wyden and Hatch was estimated to cost $1.7 billion for kinship. Today we have a mere 8 percent--8 percent--of what they recommended, hardly worthy of a celebration. The major focus of this bill is to provide a Federal incentive for the States to invest in prevention and early intervention to ensure the safety of children. For too long we backloaded everything. We responded to abuse after it occurred instead of trying to prevent it at the beginning.

We offer assistance now through this bill eventually, and we should be focused on it. I agree fully with that focus. That is why I plan to vote, reluctantly, for this proposal. But this bill would give the States an incentive through what is called Title IV-E, where the Federal Government would put up 50 percent, 50 cents on the dollar that is expended, and the States would put up 50 cents.

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Mr. DOGGETT. I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

Unfortunately, this bill provides no immediate relief for children who are in danger right now. No additional funds for 3 years. In Texas, with the opioid crisis, and in other States, these children need help now. It has gotten so bad that Federal courts are beginning to declare these systems unconstitutional. We could have done better by these children. We have the capacity to do better. We have not had the will to do better in this Congress.

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Mr. DOGGETT. Davis), one of the members of our committee who has been a real advocate for children suffering from abuse.

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

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Mr. DOGGETT. Bass), who, though not a formal member of our committee, has been a very active participant in our subcommittee and who chairs the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, among others.

Mr. Speaker, 4 years ago I authored and passed into law the Protect our Kids Act. It became law with the help of former Ways and Means Republican Chair Dave Camp, and it established a commission to eliminate child abuse and neglect fatalities. It is a mark of the progress--or the lack of progress that this year, when that commission came forward with its report, Republicans on our committee would not permit a hearing to accept the modest findings of the commission.

And so we have reached tonight. I was offered in the traditional Washington way an opportunity to put my name on this legislation. It has some meritorious provisions that eventually come into effect, but I could not do that and face my constituents in Texas saying that I had done something to address this crisis when I know, in fact, we are not doing what needs to be done to address this crisis.

I advanced one of many alternatives to provide the dollars to deal with this crisis now. That was a proposal not for new taxes, but it was a proposal for tax compliance that would have fully funded the bipartisan agreement from the Senate.

But for the ideological commitment to oppose any new resources going to address child abuse, we would have those dollars. We wouldn't be taking the money out of good adoption programs. We wouldn't be delaying a response for 3 years. We would be doing something now to address the challenges that are out there for the children who face abuse and neglect today.

That is what should be happening. That is what today's bill fails to do, though it offers us the promise of eventual action to do what we should be doing right now.

And why wait three years to respond to this crisis? Because the Republican-controlled Ways and Means Committee that vulnerable children can receive federal relief only from money taken from other children or other portions of initiatives within the jurisdiction of the Human Resources Subcommittee. Republicans rejected the use of any additional resources to prevent child abuse, including a simple tax compliance measure that would require the filing of a 1099 for alimony payments to ensure that those payments were being reported as income, which federal law has long required. That modest requirement would have provided more than $2 billion of resources, without raising a dime of taxes.

Because taking money from adoption and congregate care fails to fully fund even today's delayed response, Republicans must also today waive a Budget point of order, since this bill does not comply with their own Budget rules.

Finally, this bill makes wholly unjustified and discriminatory cuts to adoption assistance. The sole reason for these cuts is budgetary-- that was apparently the easiest way to find funds instead of adding the necessary revenue. This bill is paid for, in part, by delaying funding for children under the age of 4 to be adopted out of foster care, for those children with special needs, physical or mental, who are the hardest to adopt. According to a law Congress passed in 2008, those adopting 2- and 3-years-olds, who would otherwise have been entering foster care, would have been eligible in October for modest federal assistance; infants and 1-year-olds would have been eligible next year. Now, that funding will be delayed 2\1/2\ years, to pay for new services, none of which become available until 2020. The only excuse given for taking almost $700 million that otherwise would have supported adoptions is that some states are failing to reinvest in foster children the money that they save in foster care costs for each child who is adopted. There is no example of fraud or abuse, only the all too typical diversion by some states for other public services. Some states like Texas, which so regularly ignores the needs of its children, reinvested only a dime of every dollar of adoption savings in foster care. Others like Florida followed federal law and reinvested every dollar of their savings. This bill discriminates against Florida and similar states.

And what does this bill propose to do to crack down on this state diversion of savings from adoption? It asks for a government report. In 2014, Congress enacted provisions of the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act to prevent diversion. The Administration should enforce that Act. Requesting that the Government Accountability Office provide information already available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services adds nothing not already known. But if all we wanted was a report, we could get that report just by writing a letter to the GAO. Seeking another report represents cover for taking away resources that would otherwise have benefitted blameless infants and toddlers.

We have a serious problem that deserves a serious state-federal, bipartisan solution. I am not opposing today's bill, but it does far less than it could and should have. It is a true missed opportunity to help some of our most vulnerable Americans. Today's bill does something, someday. We ought to be responding fully and effectively this day.

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