Ensuring Opportunity for All Americans

"I believe our prosperity gives us not just an opportunity, but a great obligation. We must make sure that no one is consigned to be left out or left behind." - Al Gore

Providing the tools for self-sufficiency is central to Al Gore's vision for America. In open public meetings as a Senator from Tennessee, Al Gore often heard complaints about the welfare system, and knew something needed to be done. The Clinton-Gore Administration took on this challenge to reform the welfare system - and they succeeded. They transformed welfare to a system that requires work in exchange for time-limited assistance. As a result, the welfare rolls have fallen by more than half, resulting in the fewest number of people on welfare since 1968. Most importantly, millions of people have moved from welfare to work. The next critical phase of welfare reform is to promote responsible fatherhood and ensure that those who owe child support meet their responsibilities, to provide those who have left the rolls with the support they need to stay off, and to help those remaining on the rolls move into work. Al Gore's plan to move families into work includes a role not only for government, but also for local communities, faith- and community-based organizations and the private sector.

PROMOTING RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD

"I believe that we have a national obligation to insist upon responsible fatherhood - everywhere and from everyone." - Al Gore

Strengthening America's families and communities includes making sure that all fathers honor their responsibilities to their children. Al Gore proposes a new phase of welfare reform to ensure that fathers meet their basic obligations - to provide financial and emotional support for their children. Gore has proposed a series of proposals to help strengthen families and promote responsible fatherhood:

• Parental Responsibility Accounts: Millions of children on welfare do not receive any child support from a non-custodial parent. Too many absent parents - mainly fathers - fail to pay child support because either they are content to let the government provide for their children or because any child support payments would go straight to the federal and state governments, not their children. Al Gore wants to increase the amount of child support that is "passed through" directly to support children. Under the Gore plan, every state would have the option to pass through at least $50 of child support to families on welfare. Additional amounts paid by the father would go into a Parental Responsibility Account that would be available to children once they leave welfare-either in a lump sum or monthly payments.
• Strengthening Child Support Enforcement: Only one in four parents who owe child support actually pay it, and millions of deadbeat parents owe substantial amounts of child support. To strengthen child support enforcement Al Gore is proposing the following:
• "Don't leave home without it"-No New Credit Cards For Parents Who Owe Child Support: Al Gore challenges credit card companies to deny new credit cards or additional lines of credit to parents who owe a substantial amount of child support. To help credit card companies meet this challenge, the Federal Government will directly provide timely data on parents owing child support to the bureaus instead of relying on state reporting.
• Encourage More Fathers to Acknowledge Paternity: Al Gore challenges more fathers to establish paternity and proposed that programs receiving federal funds, such as child care providers, Head Start Centers, schools, health clinics, and food stamp offices, offer voluntary paternity establishment services to families.
• Streamline Process for Establishing Child Support Orders: To help children get the child support they need and deserve more quickly, Al Gore proposed that we streamline the process for establishing child support orders, recommending states have simple administrative processes with strong due process protections, for establishing child support orders. Courts would then handle only the more complicated cases.
• Requiring Work from Fathers Who Owe Child Support</p>
• Performance Bonus for Increasing Employment and Child Support among "Deadbroke Dads": Just as we have asked mothers to move from welfare to work, we must insist that fathers who owe child support go to work to pay it off. Al Gore is proposing to create a new performance bonus for states that do the best job of moving "deadbroke dads" into jobs and helping them meet their child support responsibilities. Gore advocates requiring work from fathers who owe child support and helping unemployed fathers get and maintain jobs, helping increase their earnings so they can pay child support and reconnect with their children. This $50 million annual bonus would reward states for such efforts. This proposal builds on the high performance bonus in the welfare reform law that rewards states that do the best job of moving welfare recipients into the workforce through job placement, job retention and increased earnings.
• Challenge Congress to Enact Fathers Work/Families Win: Al Gore is working to enact the $255 million Fathers Work/Families Win Initiative to help low-income non-custodial parents and low-income working families work and support their children. Under Fathers Work/ Families Win, new competitive grants will be awarded to business-led state and local workforce boards that work in partnership with community and faith-based organizations and agencies administering child support, welfare reform, food stamps, and Medicaid. This proposal would help about 80,000 low-income fathers and working families succeed on the job and support their children.
• Personal Responsibility Contracts: Most states require that mothers sign individual responsibility plans outlining what assistance they will receive and what will be expected of them in return. Al Gore believes fathers should do the same, by pledging to acknowledge paternity, working, paying child support, and being involved parents in order to receive help from federally funded employment programs.
• Holding Fathers Accountable for Preventing Domestic Violence: Al Gore believes we must be vigilant in combating violence against women, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court Decision regarding the Violence Against Women Act. This is why Al Gore is proposing to require that any fatherhood program receiving federal money collaborate with a local or state domestic violence organization that includes domestic violence prevention classes, assessment, and counseling.

PROMOTING MARRIAGE AND TWO-PARENT FAMILIES: Recent research shows that promoting and rewarding work has powerful positive impact on low-income families. Welfare reform can succeed in increasing employment and earnings of long-term welfare recipients, while reducing domestic abuse, improving children's behavior and school performance. Al Gore is proposing to help parents work cooperatively on raising their children and encouraging two-parent family formation where appropriate.

• Grants for Marriage Preparation, Mentoring and Counseling: Al Gore's initiative provides grants to community and faith-based organizations that help couples prepare for and strengthen their marriage and become better parents. These community and faith-based organizations are important in reducing domestic violence. Al Gore challenged states to use the flexibility and resources in the welfare reform law to support these critical efforts.
• Funds to Increase Access and Visitation: Al Gore proposes increasing the amount of federal funds to facilitate non-custodial parents' access and visitation with their children through strategies such as mediation, supervised visitation, and development of parenting plans while taking appropriate steps to prevent domestic violence.

HELPING FAMILIES MOVE FROM WELFARE TO WORK

• Encouraging Businesses to Hire Welfare Recipients: While welfare rolls are down, there are still welfare recipients who need help in finding long-term employment. Al Gore supports the Welfare to Work Partnership, to encourage a major national business effort to hire people from the welfare rolls. The Partnership began with 105 participating businesses, and has now grown to more than 15,000 businesses of all sizes and industries. Since 1997, these businesses have hired nearly 650,000 welfare recipients, surpassing the challenge set by the Administration in 1998.
• Tax Incentives to Help People Move From Welfare to Work: Al Gore supports the Welfare-to-Work and Work Opportunity Tax Credits designed to encourage more employers to hire welfare recipients and other disadvantaged individuals. This provides a credit equal to 35 percent of the first $10,000 in wages in the first year of employment, and 50 percent of the first $10,000 in wages in the second year - for a total credit of up to $8,500. This credit complements the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which offers a credit of up to $2,400 for the first year of wages for eight groups of job seekers. From 1997 to 1999, employers were eligible to claim these tax credits for nearly 900,000 newly employed welfare recipients and other disadvantaged individuals.
• Grants to States and Communities to Move Individuals From Welfare to Work: As Vice President, Al Gore fought for $3 billion in FY 1998 and FY 1999 for Welfare-to-Work grants to help states and local communities move long-term welfare recipients and certain non-custodial parents, into lasting, unsubsidized jobs. To help more long-term welfare recipients and low-income fathers go to work and support their families, Al Gore would give state, local, tribal, and community-and faith-based grantees an additional two years to spend Welfare-to-Work funds to ensure that existing resources continue to help those most in need.

MAKING WORK PAY

Al Gore is committed to making sure that anyone who can work, goes to work; and that those low-income families who work and play by the rules get the supports they need to be self-sufficient and stay off the welfare rolls. As President, he will:

• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC): The EITC has been a central pillar of the Administration's fight against poverty and make work pay. Today, the success of the EITC in reducing poverty and encouraging work is clear: EITC has helped reduce poverty and child poverty rates to their lowest levels since before the Reagan era. In 1998, EITC was directly responsible for lifting 4.3 million people out of poverty - more than double the number lifted out of poverty in 1993. Of those, 2.3 million were children, including 600,000 African-American children and 600,000 Hispanic children.

Al Gore is seeking to expand the EITC to provide tax relief to 6.8 million working families - in addition to the 14 million families who have already received a tax cut from EITC. This proposal would help low-income families in four ways:

• Expand the Maximum Credit for Working Families with Three or More Children By $500: This would provide a tax break for 2.1 million low- and moderate-income working families. This expansion is targeted at the highest concentration of child poverty: in 1998 the poverty rate for children in families with three or more related children was 28.5 percent - more than twice the 11.9 percent poverty rate for children in families with one or two related children.
• Expand the Credit for Married, Two-Earner Couples: This would benefit over 1.3 million married filers. For married, two-earner couples, this provision by itself would provide an average tax break of $250.
• Increase the Reward to Work While Expanding the Credit for Families with Two or More Children: This would provide an additional tax break, and an additional incentive to work, for families with two or more children by lowering the phaseout rate to give more rewards to families struggling to work their way into the middle class.
• Encourage Savings Through Simplification: Currently, unlike the rest of the tax code, the EITC does not reward many of the families that contribute to 401(k)'s. This proposal changes that in order to encourage savings and simplify the calculation of earned income for the purposes of the EITC.
• Increasing the Minimum Wage: Al Gore supports raising the minimum wage over the next two years to match our economic prosperity with the importance and dignity of the work done by all Americans. Now is the time to help out Americans who work hard, who play by the rules, and who earn the minimum wage. Al Gore strongly supports a one-dollar increase in the minimum wage and regular reviews of this wage increase to make sure that it keeps up with a changing economy.
• Helping to Invest for the Future: Al Gore supports expanding Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) to empower low-income families to save for a first home, post-secondary education, or to start a new business. The 1996 welfare reform law authorized the use of welfare block grants to create IDAs and 1998 legislation created a five-year $125 million demonstration program. The Department of Health and Human Services awarded grants that will establish over 10,000 savings accounts for low-income workers. Al Gore urges Congress to pass the Administration's proposal to create over 20,000 new accounts to allow low-income working families to use IDAs to save for a car that will allow them to get or keep a job.

EXPANDING ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE

Al Gore understands that a critical component to the success of our efforts to reform welfare, reward work and eliminate poverty is continued support to low-income working families. As President, Gore will focus his efforts on:

• Expanding and Improving Medicaid
• Expand Medicaid: Al Gore believes we should strengthen Medicaid by making it easier for states to expand coverage to home and community-based services. To eliminate Medicaid's historical bias towards nursing homes, Gore would enable states to expand their programs to cover community based care as well as nursing home residents with income up to 300 percent of the Social Security Income (SSI) limits, without requiring a complicated and frequently time-consuming Federal waiver.
• Improve Enrollment in Medicaid: For many low-income working families, the complication of food stamp and Medicaid enrollment is a major barrier that leaves many families without much needed health and nutrition assistance. One barrier is that states are prevented from aligning their definitions of income for food stamps and Medicaid. Al Gore has called for a new initiative that will allow states to conform these definitions - enabling states to have a single application and increase the likelihood that eligible families would enroll in both programs.
• Giving Every Child Access to Affordable High Quality Health Care:
• Ensuring Affordable Health Insurance: Al Gore would ensure that all children have access to affordable health insurance by 2005 by expanding eligibility under the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to children up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level and offer a tax credit. He would also allow uninsured children above 250 percent of the federal poverty level to buy coverage under CHIP or Medicaid with a new 25 percent tax credit to make this coverage more affordable.
• Holding States Accountable for Signing Up Eligible Children for Health Insurance: Gore would take new steps to eliminate complexity in some state applications that produce cumbersome barriers to child enrollment in health insurance. He will push for providing new options for schools and child care centers to enroll kids on the spot, rather than losing the opportunity. He will work to eliminate asset tests that intimidate eligible families from enrolling in health insurance. Gore will simplify re-enrollment for families by requiring states to increase the minimum eligibility period to one year, rather than every six months as some states require. He proposes reaching more eligible children by enabling states to link their children's health insurance programs to their school lunch programs. Gore would also make it easier for families to sign up their children by allowing families to mail in applications.
• Expanding Health Care Coverage to Working Families: While people receiving health insurance through their employers receive tax breaks, those without access to job-based health insurance receive no tax benefits. To fix this inequity, Al Gore is proposing a 25 percent refundable tax credit for people lacking access to employer-based health insurance who purchase coverage in the individual market. More than 85 percent of children on CHIP and Medicaid have uninsured parents. To help the seven million uninsured parents of these children, Gore would expand CHIP's affordable health insurance to parents - allowing states to access higher federal matching payments to cover the parents of children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP.
• Providing Affordable Health Care Options for Americans Ages 55 to 65: Americans aged 55 to 65 are the fastest growing group of uninsured people in the country. More than three million currently lack health insurance - and more 60 percent of them are women. Gore proposes to allow vulnerable Americans aged 55 to 65 to buy health coverage under Medicare with a 25 percent tax credit that would make this coverage more affordable.
• Making Health Insurance More Affordable and More Accessible for Small Businesses: Small businesses typically pay higher premiums for benefits, and administrative costs may consume as much as 40 percent of premium dollars. Gore would make health insurance more affordable for small businesses with a 25 percent tax credit for the premium costs of each employee in a small business that joins a purchasing coalition -- in which businesses join together to negotiate for affordable health insurance options for their employees.
• Maintaining and Strengthening Health Care Delivery Systems Serving the Uninsured: Gore would strengthen community health centers, public hospitals, academic medical centers and other safety-net providers that treat millions of Americans. Strengthening these centers would allow them to develop comprehensive systems of care, develop links to financial and telecommunications systems, and fill the service gaps that exist in many communities - especially in the areas of primary health care, mental health services and substance abuse services.

HELPING PARENTS CARE FOR THEIR CHILDREN

• Providing Nutritional Supports: Evidence shows that food assistance can make the difference between failure and success in school. As President, Gore will continue to support critical nutritional programs such as the school breakfast program, food stamps, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), community efforts to address hunger, and help parents feed their families.
• Making Child Care More Affordable: Al Gore has proposed a historic investment to make child care more affordable including, expanding the child care tax credit and making it refundable, increasing the Child-Care Tax Credit from 30 percent to 50 percent boosting the amount of allowable child care expenses a family can claim, and increasing the Child Care and Development Block Grant.
• Supporting Head Start: Al Gore supports an increase in funding for Head Start, in order to reach a goal of enrolling at least a million children in Head Start by 2002, including doubling the number of infants and toddlers in Early Head Start to meet the needs of very young children aged 0 to 3. Head Start supports working families by helping parents get involved in their children's educational lives and providing services to the entire family.
• Quality Early Childhood Education: Studies show that investing in early education pays tremendous benefits in terms of higher reading and achievement levels, higher graduation rates and greater success in the workplace. Furthermore, disadvantaged children who attend pre-school benefit the most, repeating fewer grades and learning at a higher level. [LINK TO EDUCATION PAGE]
• Universal Preschool: Gore has also proposed making high-quality, voluntary preschool available to every 4-year-old child in America. Earlier this year Gore announced the Administration's Early Childhood Educator Professional Development initiative, which would create professional development opportunities for early childhood educators who serve high concentrations of children living in poverty. And he will transform the child care system into a more affordable, higher quality system that will make sure children are ready to learn and succeed when they enter school. Together, these programs promise a future filled with opportunity for all of America's children.
• Providing Housing Assistance: As President, Gore will help working families afford decent housing. His plan includes increasing the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit by more than 40% - raising the state per capita cap from $1.25 to $1.75 beginning in 2001 - and index it for inflation to build an additional 180,000 units of affordable housing for working families over the next five years and increasing funding to create 120,000 new housing vouchers to make rent more affordable. Of the 120,000 new housing vouchers, 32,000 will be targeted to families moving from welfare to work, 18,000 to homeless individuals and families, and 10,000 to low-income families moving to new housing constructed through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, with the remaining 60,000 vouchers allocated to local areas to help address the large unmet need for affordable housing.

INVESTING IN OUR COMMUNITIES

• Revitalizing distressed communities: Al Gore's agenda builds upon ongoing efforts to encourage economic growth through three complementary efforts.
• Under Al Gore's leadership, the Administration has created 31 Empowerment Zones and more than 100 Enterprise Communities (EZ/ECs) to help create thousands of new jobs in communities with high unemployment and poverty rates. This initiative challenges qualified urban and rural communities to develop comprehensive strategic plans for revitalization, including job training, education, housing and other supports for EZ/EC residents. Al Gore supports a third round of empowerment zones to help more distressed communities.
• The New Markets Initiative includes several elements to spur investments in economically distressed areas, including: a 25 percent tax credit to help spur $15 billion in new equity capital for a range of private investment vehicles serving distressed communities, and America's Private Investment Companies (APICs) that target larger businesses expanding to economically distressed areas would be eligible for loan guarantees to the debt issued by investment funds, and access to financial and banking services for the approximately 10 million households who do not have access to the mainstream banking system.
• The Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund was established in 1994 to address capital access and credit, providing funds to traditional banks and thrifts for increasing their activities in economically distressed communities and investing in CDFI institutions (such as community development banks, credit unions or venture capital funds). Funds are matched $1 for $1 with non-federal resources to facilitate lending, including mortgage, financing to first-time home buyers and commercial loans to small businesses.
• Closing the Digital Divide: America was the pioneer of universal education; now America must become the pioneer of universal computer literacy. Because civil rights ring hollow without economic opportunity, Gore believes we must recognize that in the Information Age, computer literacy is a fundamental civil right. As President, Gore will not be satisfied until every American has learned the ABC's of the Internet: Access, Basic skills, and high-quality Content. In his first term as President, Gore would insist that we finish connecting every classroom and library in America to the Internet.
• As President, Gore will not be satisfied until every American has learned the ABC's of the Internet: Access, Basic skills, and high-quality Content. As Vice President, Al Gore worked hard to create the "E-rate" program to provide low cost Internet access to the schools which serve our nation's most disadvantaged children, and as president, Al Gore will make sure we finish connecting every classroom and library in America to the Internet.
• Gore will launch a new crusade to make Internet access as universal as telephone access in every American household. As President, Gore will encourage public-private partnerships and make major new investments in high-speed and satellite technologies, to bring affordable Internet access to the hardest-to-reach urban and rural communities. And in the meantime, we must make sure every low-income community has a technology center where both children and adults can access the Internet and learn to use technology.

FIGHTING HOMELESSNESS

Al and Tipper Gore believe we must use all of our resources to combat homelessness. As President, Gore will support programs to address the problem of homelessness in America, such as HUD's innovative plan called "continuum of care," which addresses the complete needs of people who are homeless: shelter, food, counseling, job training, and more. He will promote programs such as the VA's VISN 3 Homeless Veterans Treatment Program to help alleviate homelessness, particularly among the nation's veterans, by developing the stock of public housing. He will increase support for programs to treat mental illness and drug addiction. And he believes we should harness the power of faith-based organizations to address these intractable social problems.

RESTORING FAIRNESS TO LEGAL IMMIGRANTS

As Vice President, Al Gore has fought to reverse unnecessary cuts in benefits to legal immigrants that had nothing to do with the 1996 welfare reform law's goal of moving people from welfare to work. He urges Congress to pass the Administration's proposals this year to restore eligibility for SSI and Medicaid to legal immigrants who enter the country after August 22, 1996 if they have been in the United States for five years and become disabled after entering the United States, restoring eligibility to legal immigrants in the United States before August 22, 1996 who either subsequently reach age 65 or who live in a household with Food Stamp eligible children, and gives states the option to extend Medicaid or State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) coverage to low-income legal immigrant children and Medicaid to pregnant women regardless of their date of entry to the United States. As President, Gore will maintain his commitment to restoring important disability, health, and nutrition benefits to legal immigrants.

Source: Al Gore for President 2000 Web Site