Nancy Kassebaum: “I wish to respond for a moment to the Senator from Iowa. I know that Senator Grassley cares as much as I do about making…”

“I wish to respond for a moment to the Senator from Iowa. I know that Senator Grassley cares as much as I do about making sure that we can enact a welfare reform initiative and the importance of doing that. But I think I need to reiterate that the amendment I am offering deals with child care for low-income working families. The child care and development Block Grant, which has been in law for 5 years, and is being reauthorized, has been included in this overall welfare reform package. It was designed to provide, as I said earlier, a sliding fee scale of support for low-income working families. It is not addressing the child care provisions for AFDC recipients. It does bring them together into a single system rather than a two-track system, but it is not Government bureaucracy so much as I would argue the need to continue that support for families that are moving off welfare. Child care is very expensive. As I say, if you are not lucky enough to have some member of the family or a good neighbor or friend who is assisting with child care--sometimes those provisions and tradeoffs can be made; having a daughter and daughters-in-law who work, I know that sometimes it is possible, but many times it is not--child care can range as low as $60 to $80 per week to as high as $150 to $200 a week.”