Orrin Hatch: “Under our amendment, $18 billion in program funding will go to the Labor Committee and $2 billion to the Finance…”

“Under our amendment, $18 billion in program funding will go to the Labor Committee and $2 billion to the Finance Committee to be added to the $16 billion already in the budget resolution. That means that each committee will get $18 billion to work on complementary programs to help the poor and the near poor. We will have to work out the legislative language. I hope it will be like the CHILD bill that we have worked so long and hard to make a possibility. But what we are voting on today, if and when we do, is the right to have enough funding moneys to take care of these kids who are the poorest of the poor families not on Medicaid who cannot do it otherwise. Of all the criticisms of our bill, I am perhaps most dismayed by the charge that this bill creates an entitlement. In sharp contrast to last year's Kennedy-Kerry bill which was an entitlement, I succeeded in persuading my cosponsor Ted Kennedy, one of the most liberal Members of the Senate, to agree to the following provision: Nonentitlement.--Nothing in this title shall be construed as providing an individual with an entitlement to assistance under this title.”