FAMILY CAP FAILS

Twenty moderate Republicans today joined with Senate Democrats to defeat a national welfare "family cap" by a vote of 66-34. Conservatives had pushed to deny cash payments to single mothers who have more children. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, who added the family cap to his sweeping welfare reform bill last Friday, lobbied hard for the measure, saying "If we don't deal with out-of-wedlock births, then we're really not dealing with welfare reform." Republican Pete Domenici, who led the opposition, said that the payments in question were too small to discourage poor women from having more out-of-wedlock children. He added that the limitation might actually encourage poor women to have abortions.

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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