Mike Levin: “the Frist amendment is a sense of the Senate amendment which would state the view of Congress that the President should…”

“the Frist amendment is a sense of the Senate amendment which would state the view of Congress that the President should ensure that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services approve some 22 welfare waiver requests submitted from 16 States. I cannot support such a sweeping blanket amendment. My own State of Michigan has a waiver application pending which was submitted late in June which contains some 75 individual waivers. This request has much merit. The proposal contains work requirements which seem to be similar to legislation which I succeeded in adding to the Senate-passed welfare reform bill last year and which I will offer to this bill. However, we have not been given any opportunity to evaluate the various waiver requests of the other 15 States embodied in this amendment. We just do not know the details of welfare waiver submissions from Utah or Georgia or Kansas or Wyoming or other States included in the amendment. The President and the Department of Health and Human Services have approved more than 60 waivers, more than any previous President. I support this kind of flexibility. I hope that before this session of Congress ends, we will have, in law, comprehensive bi-partisan welfare reform which makes such waivers unnecessary.”