Tax Extenders Act Of 2009 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I voted against waving a budget point of order to the Murray/Kerry amendment on the grounds that it is not paid for and contained terrible welfare and Medicare policies.

The Congress cannot keep spending money it does not have. It is unconscionable to put forth an amendment that is not being paid for at a time of exploding deficits to an underlying bill that already has another $104 billion not paid for.

In addition to adding to the deficit during a fiscal crisis, the underlying Murray/Kerry amendment perpetuates flawed welfare policies that undermine key principles of welfare reform.

The Murray/Kerry amendment perpetuates the fund established in the stimulus bill that, for the first time since the landmark 1996 welfare reform act, rewards States for increasing their welfare caseload and does not require these additional eligible adults to participate in work, education or training activities.

This in turn adds to the current deplorable situation where, according to the latest data we have from the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. average for eligible adults receiving welfare doing nothing is 56 percent.

That is right--on average 56 percent of adults receiving welfare are engaged in zero hours of work, training or education activity. Some States have over 70 percent of eligible adults doing nothing.

That is zero hours of job search. Zero hours of education. Zero hours of substance abuse treatment. Zero hours of job training. Zero hours of subsidized work activities.

I bet if you asked the American people--how many adults on welfare should be doing something to qualify for their welfare check--I bet the answer would be: all of them!

I bet if the American people knew that the majority of adults on welfare were doing nothing, they would be as stunned and appalled as I am.

We need to do better by these families. Allowing them to languish in the soul crushing, deep and persistent poverty of welfare is a travesty. The Murray/Kerry amendment does nothing to address the issue that the majority of adults on welfare are not doing anything to get themselves out of poverty.

That makes no sense, Mr. President, and I cannot support it.

Finally, in addition to the misguided welfare policies, I also had reservations about the use of ``intelligent assignment'' in Part D to pay for this amendment. I fully support efforts to make sure vulnerable populations are in the lowest cost plan that meets their personal health care needs and look forward to continuing to work on this issue in the future. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, and MedPAC commissioners have raised concerns that ``intelligent assignment'' could lead to increased disruption, higher costs and little overall improvement for beneficiaries.

Therefore, I opposed waving the Budget Act that would have allowed the Murray/Kerry amendment to undermine welfare policy, advance misguided Medicare policy and increase the deficit.

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