Mr. DODD. Madam President, I will take advantage of this time while we are waiting here. Let me explain. People are wondering what is going on--I have a podium in front of me and papers in front of me. I am prepared at some point to offer an amendment on child care . We had one vote already several days ago and made an effort here to try to come to some accommodation, a compromise position on child care . That may still happen. I was hopeful that the arrangement put together would work--and it may still work.

I am prepared to offer the amendment. I have been here on the floor now for virtually the last 2 1/2 , 3 days, trying to find a compromise. I am trying hard to find a welfare reform package I can vote for. I mean that very sincerely and deeply. I think the President would like to have a bill he could sign. And largely what happens, I suppose, in the next couple of hours might determine whether or not we will have a bipartisan bill.

My own view, Madam President--I will not take a lot of time here because people have heard this debate on numerous occasions in days past, weeks past, months past. Senator Hatch of Utah and I offered, back some 6 or 7 years ago, the child care and development block grant bill, which became the law of the land in 1990. Five years ago, we provided child care assistance to people in the country, particularly to the working poor families to keep them off welfare and allow them to work. It allowed them to get some child care assistance--it does not take care of everybody--it provides some help to some people. There are long waiting lists in many States for this assistance. In fact, I recall now--having recited these statistics so many times, I can almost call them State by State.

As the presiding officer is from the great State of Texas, I think the waiting list in Texas is about 20,000 people. In the State of Georgia, it is 41,000 people. The numbers are in that range. And the 36 States that keep data on child care slots--not every State keeps waiting lists--but 36 States tell us that they have long lists. There is a tremendous need and demand out there.

Again, I think the central point of the Dole welfare reform bill is, of course, to get people from welfare to work. And again I think most people accept the fact that 60 percent of the people on welfare have children under the age of 5. Of the 14 million people on welfare, 5 million are adults, 9 million or 10 million are children. So what we are talking about here is a simple enough notion; that is, to provide some sort of a safe setting for children as we move their parent or parents into the work force.

To do that requires resources. We are told by the Department of Health and Human Services that to fill the 165-percent increase in demand that would occur as a result of the bill that the majority leader has presented to us, it would require some $6 billion over 5 years to accommodate that demand.

I offered an amendment in that amount a few days ago. It failed by a single vote here. Then, over the last 2 1/2 days, in consultations with interested parties here--and I will not go into names of people--we were able to work out a compromise, a bipartisan compromise, on the issue. The compromise reduced the $6 billion by several billions of dollars, which would mean that we would not meet the full demand, based on the assessments that had been made, but would provide a pool of money for States. This would mean that Connecticut, Texas, New York, and other States would have a pool of resources to assist in the very legitimate issue of how you move people from welfare to work.

Now, the bill requires that we move 25 percent of all welfare recipients to work in the first 2 years, and 50 percent by the year 2000. That will place great demands on States to make that transition. If they cannot meet the demands, of course, they face penalties in the bill. It probably would be less expensive for most States to pay the penalty than actually to comply with the law. I made that rough calculation. I think it is a common interest of ours to achieve compliance with the requirements.