June 10, 2016
"to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life." --Abraham Lincoln
Chairman's Note: From Poverty Trap to Temporary Lifeline
The key to understanding America’s social-welfare system today – and why it needs to be reformed – is not its bloated annual budget but its tendency to undermine the two most dependable routes out of poverty: work and marriage.
For many Americans struggling to make ends meet, our safety net works as it was intended, providing a temporary lifeline when they fall on hard times and need help getting back on their feet.
But for millions more living in or on the edge of poverty, our welfare state functions more like a Faustian bargain. The needy receive the resources for life’s basic necessities, but only so long as they refrain from taking positive steps – like getting a job and getting married – toward self-sufficiency.
The surest way to improve one’s lot in life is through hard work. And we know from a mountain of social-science research – confirming millennia of experience and intuition – that the stability and support engendered by marriage improves the economic outlook not only of adults, but also their kids.
Yet our welfare programs penalize marriage by reducing – and often eliminating altogether – a couple’s combined benefits after they get married. Our welfare programs also punish work. Beneficiaries face benefit “cliffs” as their incomes rise, either from finding a job or getting a raise, and only two of the more than 80 means-tested programs require able-bodied adults to work in order to receive aid.
So it was predictable that government spending on welfare programs would balloon over the decades, eventually reaching approximately $1 trillion this year – a staggering sum that nonetheless pales in comparison to the social and human costs of our broken welfare system.
The real problem with our welfare system isn’t that it’s expensive or ineffective, but that it is culturally and spiritually debilitating – leaving the very people it purports to help estranged from the only influences that are capable of fostering upward mobility.
So welfare reform, properly understood, is as much a moral imperative as it is an economic necessity. Yes, we want a more affordable welfare system, but we also want inspired, self-reliant citizens, capable of leading productive and happy lives.
The American people deserve both, which is why I recently teamed up with Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC) to introduce the Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act, a bill that repairs the crucial link between effort and reward in the federal food-stamp program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Modeled after Maine’s recent successful reforms, the Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act establishes a monthly 80-hour work requirement for all “ABAWD” food-stamp recipients (ABAWD stands for able-bodied adults without dependents) and creates work-activation programs that provide beneficiaries with vocational education, job training, community service opportunities, job-search assistance, and other resources to promote self-sufficiency.
There is still much work to be done to ensure that our welfare system strengthens, rather than undermines, work and marriage. But this bill is a critical first step. And like all future reforms, it will succeed by making poverty not tolerable, but temporary.
Issue in Focus: A Victory for the American People
It’s not every day that the American people score a victory over the global elite, but on Thursday that’s exactly what happened.
The victory came in the form of preventing the ascension of Mark McWatters to the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, whose nomination Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) has successfully bottled up in the Senate Banking Committee.
Created by Executive Order during the height of the Great Depression, the Ex-Im Bank has been used a tool to reward politically connected elites, both in the United States and abroad, for decades.
Here’s how it works: a large corporation pays money to lobbyists and politicians so that Ex-Im will leverage the full faith and credit of American taxpayers to guarantee loans used to finance global transactions. Because these loans are backed by you, the United States taxpayer, these politically favored global corporations are able to secure below-market interest rates. The difference between the market interest rate the global corporations would have paid to finance their transactions and the below-market interest rate made available by Ex-Im’s guarantees, acts as a giant taxpayer subsidy for these global corporations.
The lobbyists and politicians supporting these global corporations will tell you that Ex-Im’s loan guarantees are cost-free programs that support American middle-class jobs.
Not quite.
First of all, as any economist will tell you, there is no such thing as a free lunch. As the Congressional Research Service has explained, “Subsidized export financing merely shifts production among sectors within the economy, rather than adding to the overall level of economic activity, and subsidizes foreign consumption at the expense of domestic consumption.”
Secondly, if these global corporations are so concerned about American middle-class jobs, then why do they spend millions of dollars lobbying foreign governments to create and maintain their own version of our Export-Import Bank? These corporations aren’t concerned as much about American jobs as they are about maximizing the number of foreign governments that subsidize their business.
And who exactly is on the other end of all these Ex-Im financed deals? China mostly.
China is by far the biggest beneficiary of Ex-Im guaranteed loans. And since most of that financing benefits state-owned firms, the Ex-Im Bank is one of the largest subsidizers of Chinese communist officials in the world.
For instance, in 2013, the Export-Import Bank financed a $63 million deal to help build a semiconductor manufacturing plant in China. How exactly does subsidizing Chinese semiconductor manufactures help save American jobs?
It doesn’t.
But it does help line the pockets of the governing elite both here and in China. That is what the Export-Import Bank is all about.
By blocking the nomination of McWatters to the Export-Import Bank’s Board of Directors, Sen. Shelby has denied Ex-Im the quorum it needs to authorize loan guarantees over $10 million. Between 2007 and 2014, 84 percent of the Bank’s subsidy and loan-guarantee deals exceeded $10 million, and the vast majority were given to the wealthiest, most well-connected businesses that should have no problem acquiring financing on the open market.
The American people have not succeeded in shutting down this spigot of cash to the world’s global elite yet, but we are gaining votes in the House and Senate every year.
We will win eventually.
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Lee Urges Colleagues to Support Due Process Guarantee Amendment
WASHINGTON—Today, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) spoke on the Senate Floor to urge support for amendment #4448 to the NDAA, the Due Process Guarantee Amendment. Remarks as prepared for delivery are available below.
Mr. President: I rise today to discuss – and to urge my colleagues to support – amendment #4448, the Due Process Guarantee Amendment.
This amendment addresses a little-known problem that I believe most Americans would be shocked to discover even exists.
Under current law, the federal government has the power to detain indefinitely – without charge or trial – U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who are apprehended on American soil.
Let that sink in for a moment.
If you are a United States citizen or a U.S. Green Card holder, and you are arrested on American soil because you are suspected of supporting a terrorist group or other enemy of the United States, the federal government has the power to detain you indefinitely without formally charging you or offering you a trial.
I’m not talking about American citizens who travel to foreign lands to take up arms against the U.S. military and are captured on the battlefield. I’m talking about U.S. citizens apprehended right here in America. Under current law, even they can be imprisoned for an unspecified period of time without ever being charged or given a trial.
You don’t need to be a defense attorney to recognize what an outrage this is.
Arresting U.S. citizens on American soil and then detaining them indefinitely without charge or trial is an obvious deviation from the constitutional right to due process of law. The last time the federal government exercised such a power – during the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II without congressional authorization – Congress responded by passing a law to prevent it from happening again.
Of course, such legal protection should not need to be codified into federal statute.
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution states in no uncertain terms that “No person shall be [...] deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” But then again, as James Madison reminded us, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
So in the wake of World War II, Congress passed, and President Nixon signed, the Non-Detention Act of 1971, which states: “No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.”
Those last few words are crucial: “except pursuant to an Act of Congress.” The Non-Detention Act of 1971 recognized – as I believe most Americans do – that in some cases – in some grave, treacherous, unfortunate cases – indefinite detention of U.S. citizens may become necessary.
But the point is that the federal government does not inherently possess the power of indefinite detention. To the extent such power can even be said to exist within our constitutional framework, only “an Act of Congress” – such as an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) – can give the federal government that power.
But fast forward 40 years and this important legal protection has eroded.
In 2011, Congress passed its annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2012 – the predecessor of the bill we’re considering today. In the 2012 NDAA there is a provision in Section 1021 giving the federal government the power to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial – even those who are apprehended on American soil.
Now, it may sound like Section 1021 meets the “Act of Congress” threshold established by the Non-Detention Act of 1971, but it does not.
Here’s why: the language of Section 1021 merely presumes that the 2001 AUMF gives the federal government the right to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without having to prove anything – even though an explicit grant of such power appears nowhere in the 2001 AUMF.
My amendment would resolve this problem. In clear and straightforward language, my amendment clarifies that “A general authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority, on its own, shall not be construed to authorize the imprisonment or detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States apprehended in the United States.”
This means that if Congress believes it is necessary to have the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens who are captured in the U.S., then Congress must expressly say so in any authorization it passes.
My amendment recognizes that the due-process protections of U.S. citizens are far too important to leave up to implied legal contemplation.
The 2001 AUMF does not expressly state that the federal government has the power to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who are apprehended on American soil. So if those who believe that it is in the national-security interests of the United States for the federal government to have this power, they should file an amendment to the AUMF that says so explicitly, and then we can see what the American people and their elected representatives think.
Mr. President, this amendment should not be controversial.
In fact, in 2012 the Senate passed this amendment with 67 votes – in large part thanks to the tireless efforts by my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, who joins me as a co-sponsor of the amendment today.
Unfortunately, the Due Process Guarantee Amendment was stripped from the 2013 NDAA during the conference process.
At the time, some opponents of the amendment were under the impression that it would extend due-process protections to U.S. citizens apprehended outside of the United States, but that is undeniably false.
The Due Process Guarantee Amendment applies only to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who are apprehended on U.S. soil.
It has been four years since that misunderstanding prevented Congress from passing this commonsense reform. That is more than enough time for this institution to gain clarity on what this amendment does and does not do.
It’s time we finally pass this amendment, so that it can be signed into law.
I yield the floor.
