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Reconciliation Part 1: "A Very Republican Christmas"
House of Representatives - November 17, 2005

Mr. Speaker, Americans on the front line in protecting and defending our most vulnerable children have been sending out an SOS. They do not merely solve problems every day. They save lives.

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Their message is loud and clear. The child support provisions included in reconciliation undermine the Federal commitment to child support enforcement. Republican Reconciliation is reckless disregard for safeguarding children.

It is a license for people to break their promise of child support because enforcement will be lax. Eighty percent of the children receiving support live in low- and moderate-income families. The bill would reduce the share of child support enforcement costs that are paid by the Federal Government from 66 percent to 50 percent by 2010. Federal funding to the program would be cut by $5 billion over the next 5 years, a nearly 40 percent cut in funding for the program by 2010. We make the money go away, but not the problems or the needs.

The CBO estimated that child support provisions in the reconciliation bill would reduce collections sent to families by $21 billion over the next 10 years.

As a result, more deadbeat dads will be left off the hook, while more low-income families will look to State and Federal programs to make up the difference in lost income. But we will not be there, just like the deadbeat dads.

In 2004, more than $4 was collected for every dollar spent in the program. Even President Bush's 2006 budget cites the program as "effective" and "one of the highest rated block formula grants of all reviewed programs government-wide."

A hard-working program will fall on hard times if we leave the reconciliation bill as it is. People will be hurt. Children will be hurt. Republicans will be responsible. And for what?

Mr. Speaker, this is the season of giving, and Republicans are going to be very generous with those very few Americans rolling in dough.

Republican leaders have scheduled their midnight express to roll through town again tonight. Republicans will climb aboard to run over the American people in the dead of the night.

Child Support Enforcement, that is not even in the baggage car. Republicans like doing things in the dark, behind closed doors, in the dead of night, hoping the American people will not notice.

Well, not today. Today's light shines on their darkness. If one candle can curse the darkness, we are going to use a search light. It is the Republican season of giving, and here is what it means: we take from the sack of the poor children in this country 330,000 child-care dollars and put it in the rich sock. It is Christmas time. Take $700 million from Social Security and put it in the rich stocking. Take child support, $21 billion from Child Support Enforcement and put it in the rich stocking.

Take Medicaid from the poor, $10 billion, and put it in the rich stocking. Student loans, $14 million. I take $14 billion from student loans and give that to the rich stocking. And food stamps from 300,000 tables we take and put it in the rich stocking. Finally, foster children, $600 million from foster children in this country goes into the sock, later tomorrow, of the rich because we have taken it from the poor and we have given it to the rich.

That is what this bill before us is all about. Tonight in the dead of night you are going to give to the rich who do not need it and take from the needy who cannot afford to lose it. You will disguise this as a Christmas stocking with presents, just in time for the holidays. But it is a heavy-handed club used on the American people.

The heartland is not heartless. Not even the dead of the night will hide what you intend to do to the American people tonight. Even the rich will be ashamed. I wonder if the Republicans will. They should be.