REPRESENTATIVE GERALD B. SOLOMON: If anyone should claim that this welfare reform legislation has been hasty or ill-conceived, I would ask--`Where was the welfare reform legislation when the Democrats held both Houses of Congress and the White House?'
Mr. Speaker, we certainly do not have the time to recount the President's many broken campaign promises, but the Clinton administration's failure to make good on its pledge to reform the welfare system has been outrageous.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4 tackles some of the most difficult issues of our day directly and head-on.
The bill makes fiscal sense by consolidating numerous major programs into block grants directly to the States, and that's the way it should be. Layers of bureaucracy in Washington will be made unnecessary.
The savings will be phenomenal--and the States will maintain maximum flexibility to help the poor in their areas, and they know how best to do it, not us inside the beltway.
The bill requires welfare recipients to work within 2 years, and bars receipt of benefits for more than 5 years.
Reasonable restrictions are applied to recipients on AFDC to encourage self-sufficiency; in other words, to stop them from being second, and third and fourth generation beneficiaries of welfare.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4 makes badly needed reforms to the Federal food stamp program, to the Supplemental Security Income program and family nutrition and child nutrition programs.
Mr. Speaker, as the House debates welfare reform this week, the public should take note of which of these proposals honestly addresses the problems of poverty in the United States of America.
Mr. Speaker, the American people will be asking, and Members had better be asking ourselves, which alternative defends the status quo. That is the question right here tonight, which alternative defends the status quo that has failed so miserably, and which alternative wrestles with the issues of illegitimate births, welfare dependency, child support enforcement, and putting low-income people back to work.
Mr. Speaker, the Personal Responsibility Act will prevail when scrutinized in this manner. I ask my colleagues to do this. During the recent debate on cutting spending I asked this House what is compassionate about adding another trillion dollars to the debt on the backs of our children and our grandchildren. Is that compassionate? The answer was no then. I ask my colleagues today now what is compassionate about continuing failed welfare programs that encourage a second, and third and fourth generation of welfare dependency? I say to my colleagues, `You know, and I know, the answer is `nothing.'
Mr. Speaker, that is why we must not defend the status quo. We must make the changes that are so necessary today. We can do it by voting for this bill.
Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.
This is probably the most important debate and perhaps the most important issue that we will face, perhaps during my lifetime, certainly the most important since I have been in the Congress of the United States.
What is at stake? Well, basically, what is at stake is this: What do we do to free millions of Americans from the shackles that the Federal Government has placed them in? All of the programs were well meaning. Over the years I sat behind several chairmen, one who used to say, `Bill, these programs just aren't working the way we had intended them.' And that is true. So year after year, generation after generation, we have enslaved these people, so, unless we make a change, they will never have an opportunity to get part of that American dream. That is destructive to them. That is destructive to our society and to our country.
Making changes is very, very difficult. Change is something that people fear, and that is true in no place worse than in the Congress of the United States. But if we do not change, then, of course, we are going to continue to enslave the very people we have sent over $5 trillion to try to help. Year after year we will be doing this, and it is totally unfair to hose people in our society.
So it would be my hope that we get away from the rhetoric and pay a little attention to the facts and see whether we can do better than we have done in the past. I think those people that we have tried to help are depending on us to make that change.
The first thing we have to do is admit that we failed. That should not be so difficult. It does not matter which side of the aisle we sit on. Just passing more programs and more programs and adding more money and more money has not worked. It has disadvantaged the disadvantaged. So it is time to make that change. An alcoholic has to admit that he has that problem before we can ever do anything to help him or for him to help himself to a recovery. It is true of any other drug addict. It is equally as true with the legislation we are dealing with today.
So I would call on my colleagues to listen carefully and participate intelligently. Let us not get up and give a lot rhetoric that has nothing to do with the facts. We know the facts. We know the facts of how we failed, and we know the facts of what it is we are trying to do to see whether we can help the most vulnerable in this country receive a portion of the American dream that we on the Federal level have denied them from receiving all of these years.
THE MOST IMPORTANT WEEK OF THE 104TH CONGRESS: WELFARE REFORM (House - March 24, 1995)
Mr. FUNDERBURK. Mr. Speaker, I said 2 nights ago that this was the most important week of the 104th Congress. This week we decided between two very different visions of America. The first vision is offered by the same people who stood guard over 30 years of disintegrating families, children having children, burned out cities, a 30-percent illegitimacy rate, and three generations of Americans who do nothing but sit at home waiting for the next government check to arrive.
Mr. FUNDERBURK. Mr. Speaker, I said 2 nights ago that this was the most important week of the 104th Congress. This week we decided between two very different visions of America. The first vision is offered by the same people who stood guard over 30 years of disintegrating families, children having children, burned out cities, a 30-percent illegitimacy rate, and three generations of Americans who do nothing but sit at home waiting for the next government check to arrive.
The Democrats are the guardians of business as usual; more taxes, more bureaucrats, more Washington. Having lost faith in the American dream, they have nothing to offer except more of the same shopworn programs which degrade and enslave millions. They have made generations of Americans nothing more than animals in the Government barn. They promise you happiness in exchange for a handout and the loss of your freedom. Their notion of reform is to spend more of other peoples' money.
Take a look at their so-called answers to our Personal Responsibility Act. One raises taxes on every business--big and small--in America and the other cuts off child tax credits for almost half of the families in this country. Each Democratic welfare bill says the Government must give you a job and if the State doesn't have any jobs to give it will pay someone in the private sector to hire you.
This is what the liberals have in store for us. This is their version of reform : have a child out of wedlock, don't have a job and don't live with a man who is working. If you do these things the taxpayer will provide you with everything you need. Uncle Sam will give you a check each month, with free medical care, free food, and under Mr. Clinton's plan, a Federal job and free child care.
Mr. Speaker, I really feel sorry for the Democrats. They actually believe it is an act of kindness to hand able-bodies Americans womb to tomb care, demanding nothing in return. They call this $5 trillion nightmare that they have created--a system which dooms millions to a life of poverty and condemns helpless children to perpetual despair--compassionate. Their system is not compassionate, their system is obscene.
The ugly sideshow of the liberal's welfare system is the notorious child welfare bureaucracy. The massive increase in illegitimacy that the liberals want to subsidize has created a horrendous explosion in the number of abused and neglected children. As Mona Charen noted yesterday, `social services and charities are overburdened by the caseload but they are also overburdened by liberal thinking.' Clinton Democrats are formally committed to a philosophy and practice which in most cases sends an abused and neglected child back to the parents who have hurt him, all in the name of family preservation. The Republican welfare reform bill recognizes this nonsense for the folly that it is. We believe that it is a far greater kindness to place a child with loving adoptive parents rather than to give an abusive violent parent another dozen chances to hurt that child.
Before I came to Washington, I watched the liberal Democrats and their allies in the permanent poverty industry heap scorn upon anyone who dared stand up and say that welfare socialism was destroying our country from within. But on November 8, 1994 we the people finally rose up and said enough is enough. We had enough of the professionally compassionate robbing us of our hard-earned money, dumbing down our schools, promoting deviant behavior and creating a suffocating culture of dependency for our poorest families. They had 30 years to do something about welfare and they sat on their hands and did nothing.
Mr. Speaker, I said at the beginning of my remarks that we are debating two visions of America. We know where the liberal vision has taken us. The second vision--the conservative vision--begins and ends with individual liberty. Our view of society is one in which people have the right and the opportunity to work, invest, and raise their children as they see fit. We have faith in the energy of the American people, the liberals have faith in Washington, DC.
The Republican reform bill takes aim at the heart of the welfare problem--the underage mother who enters the welfare rolls after conceiving an out-of-wedlock child. Our reform denies benefits to those who continue to have children without having any means to independently support those children. We also eliminate the Federal middleman and cut the heart out of the Washington welfare bureaucracy.
We send power back to the people. We say the real welfare reformers are in the States and counties. These are the people closest to the problem. They know their communities' needs. They are on the front line in the war against poverty. They understand its causes and they will provide the moral and spiritual leadership so many of our people so desire.
Mr. Speaker, we were sent to Washington to put people to work and get the Government's hand out of working people's pockets. We say if the American people give you a hand-up you will find a real job or we will cut off your benefits in 2 years.
Let me tell you where we will be if we do not put a brake on the runaway welfare train. Today Federal welfare spending stands at $387 billion, by 2000 we will spend $537 billion on welfare entitlements. The madness has to stop.
We have an unprecedented opportunity to save the lives of millions of children who would otherwise be trapped in the system which has ruined previous generations. We cannot be intimidated by the liberals in Congress and the media who offer no solutions, only scare tactics. They throw out words like cruel and mean but I ask you Mr. Speaker, what is more cruel, what is more mean, then to condemn a child to life on the liberal welfare dole. That is the cruelest punishment imaginable. We cannot allow another generation of American children to fall victim to the compassion of the American left. We must be strong, we must be bold, and we must act now. Our children deserve no less.