Dale Bumpers: “everybody knows that this amendment is a fair proposition. What Senator Graham and I are suggesting is that we divide…”

“everybody knows that this amendment is a fair proposition. What Senator Graham and I are suggesting is that we divide all the money in the pot by the number of poor children in the country and we allocate it to the States based on the number of poor children each State has. For example, if we had 10 million poor children in the country, we would divide the total pot of money by 10 million and that amount would be paid to each State for every poor child in that State. Madam President, the problem Senator Graham and I are trying to solve is a result of the formula we've used for the AFDC Program since its inception. Under that formula, the more affluent States have, over a period of years, received the lion's share of the Federal money because they were able to put more State money in the program, and we were matching it. On the face of it, we should applaud States that have tried to improve and do better for themselves. But we should not penalize those who are not affluent and who could not put more money in. Think about this for a moment. I want Members to think about this. I have good friends in this body from States who make off like bandits under the Dole bill. Just take the State of Rhode Island. We have two fine Senators, my dear friends from Rhode Island, but I do not believe either Senator from Rhode Island would say they believe that a poor child in Rhode Island is worth $2,244 a year, but a poor child in my home State of Arkansas is worth only $394.…”