Clinton administration adds federal money to promote adoption 
9/24/99 -- 4:03 PM

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Surrounded by adopted children and their smiling parents on Friday, President Clinton pointed to nationwide success moving foster children to permanent homes, and announced more than $25 million in federal money for adoption programs. 
The Clinton administration will award $20 million in bonuses to 35 states where adoptions are on the increase. The largest bonus will go to Illinois, which gets $6.8 million as a reward for increasing adoptions to 4,656 last year - more than double the average number of adoptions in the previous two years. 

Another $5.5 million will go to promote adoptions across state lines and adoptions of children with special needs or problems. 

The money follows on a 1997 law that relaxed or eliminated laws limiting adoptions of foster children. 

``We have new evidence that these efforts are bearing fruit,'' Clinton said. 

He cited a new Health and Human Services Department report showing adoptions from the foster care system increased from 28,000 in 1996 to 36,000 in 1998. Clinton called it the first significant increase in adoptions since the national foster care program was created nearly 20 years ago. 

The administration set a goal of doubling annual adoptions nationwide by 2002, which would mean about 56,000 in that year. 

``We're well on our way,'' Clinton said at a ceremony also attended by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and several families with adopted children. 

Clinton said most credit should go to families such as Dawn and Steven Keane of Hershey, Pa., who open their homes to foster children or others who might never find a permanent home otherwise. The Keanes' three children introduced Clinton at Friday's event. Two of the children were adopted last year. 

``They are the proof of the unlimited goodness of the human heart,'' Clinton said. 

Social services agencies say it is very hard to find permanent families for older children who may have bounced from foster home to foster home. Similarly, children with medical or behavioral problems are difficult to place. 

The audience also included what Clinton called a remarkable bipartisan congressional delegation. The group of six included two of the most visible political personalities of last year's impeachment drama - House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who called the evidence against Clinton overwhelming, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., one of the president's loudest defenders. 

``This may be the only issue all six of these people agree on,'' Clinton said, laughing. 

Continuing in a folksy tone, Clinton said he got quite angry recently as he read a newspaper profile about DeLay. 

``I got about halfway through and he was giving me the devil for something. You know he's very good at that,'' Clinton said. 

Clinton said he was particularly irritated at DeLay's insinuation that the president cheats at golf. His irritation evaporated, Clinton said, as the story turned to DeLay's experience as a foster parent. 

``All of a sudden I didn't care what he said about my golf game,'' Clinton said. 

Although Clinton framed adoption as a nonpartisan issue, at least one House Republican claimed that the White House glossed over one political point. The GOP-passed $792 billion tax cut that Clinton vetoed Thursday would have doubled the tax credit available to adoptive families. 

``If the president was truly concerned about the adoptions of foster children in America, he would have signed the tax relief package Congress sent him,'' said Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla. and chairman of the House Republican Conference. 

Copyright 1999 Associated Press