[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 74 (Tuesday, June 14, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 14, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                             WELFARE REFORM

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, in a short while, I believe in about an 
hour, President Clinton will be unveiling his welfare reform proposal 
in Kansas City.
  I rise to thank the President for the leadership he has shown by 
making this proposal because he is putting forth a proposal that is 
tough, that is sensible, and that I believe will be effective.
  Mr. President, with his emphasis on work, family, and responsibility, 
President Clinton will give us today a blueprint that really will 
change welfare as we know it and really will end welfare as a way of 
life.
  I think we have to start by facing some hard facts as we talk about 
this issue. Welfare, as we know it in America today, is a disaster for 
the people who are on it, as well as for the rest of us who pay for it.
  Under our system of welfare, if you are born to an unmarried teenage 
mother who has not finished high school, which is usually the case, the 
odds are you will spend the rest of your childhood in poverty. Although 
70 percent of those on welfare leave within 2 years, the sad fact is 
that most of them, and I say that specifically, most of them will 
eventually return to the welfare rolls.
  Welfare has become a revolving door of poverty for generation after 
generation of the same American families, and its failure has a 
relationship directly to so many of the other serious problems facing 
our country today, from illiteracy to crime, from illegitimacy to 
unemployment.
  Mr. President, we all know there has been a great deal of debate 
within the Clinton administration about the scope and shape of the 
President's welfare reform plan. I was among those who urged the 
President to hang tough and produce a plan that offers meaningful 
change.
  Today I rise to say to my colleagues in the Senate that the President 
has fulfilled his promise to the American people and remained true to 
his own beliefs by giving us a plan that will end welfare as we know 
it.
  As a result of the President's leadership today, millions of 
Americans in years ahead will be moving off of welfare, either by 
working hard and earning an education and a job, or by being kicked off 
of welfare for failing to play by the same rules that most of America 
plays by.
  The features of the President's welfare reform plan that I believe 
make a great deal of common sense and should have broad support in the 
Congress and the Nation are as follows:
  A requirement that people who go on welfare start their search for 
work on day one when they apply for welfare. Too often the system has 
become one of paperwork for determining eligibility for welfare. What 
we ought to be doing in the system from the day a person applies is 
figuring out how we can find that person a job.
  The President's program also includes a time limit of 2 years for 
most people on welfare. A good proposal, a so-called 2-years-and-out 
proposal. But do not be confused by it. The focus of this program is 
not to give people 2 years of a free ride on welfare. The focus of the 
President's program is to say from the day somebody walks into the 
welfare office to apply for welfare, ``How are we, working together, 
going to find you a job and a better way of life for our country and 
your kids?''
  In the President's program, parents who do not stay in school, look 
for work, or refuse to go to job training will have welfare payments 
taken away.
  Anyone who turns down a private sector job will be removed from the 
welfare rolls.
  In another area of real concern, illegitimacy and the 
irresponsibility of fathers of the out-of-wedlock children, hospitals 
will have to establish the identity of every child born, and the 
mothers will be required to name and help find their child's father or 
else they will not receive welfare benefits.
  States will be allowed to limit additional benefits for children born 
of parents on welfare; in other words, capping those benefits after the 
first child, as some States are already doing.
  Fathers who refuse to pay child support will be subject to harsher 
penalties, including suspension of their driver's license.
  Welfare offices will be streamlined, with funding levels tied to the 
ability of welfare workers to help people on welfare find jobs and get 
child support.
  Many people on welfare will be able to get the support they need to 
join the work force, including job training, child care, and job search 
assistance.
  And perhaps long-term, as important as anything else, this program of 
President Clinton's begins a national campaign--I would call it a 
national crusade--against teenage pregnancy, which must go hand in hand 
with our welfare reform efforts. If we want to change welfare as a way 
of life, we have to deal with out-of-wedlock births. Because the simple 
fact is that a family qualifies for welfare when there is no father in 
the house, when a child is born to a family without a parent--almost 
always the father--in the house, and that is what we must stop.
  We must make it clear that these births out of wedlock are not only 
morally wrong, they are sociologically and personally devastating, 
particularly to the children and also to the rest of society that bears 
not only the payments for those children but the consequences of their 
impossible childhood which often expresses itself in criminal behavior.
  This campaign against teen pregnancy must begin with the Government, 
but the Government has to involve religious leaders, the private 
sector, schools, and families to turn the tide against this 
devastating, outrageous number of children born to unmarried teenage 
parents.
  Simply put, Mr. President, we must infuse America's welfare system 
with the values that made America great--family, faith, responsibility, 
and hard work. Welfare must reinforce and reconstruct families. It must 
reward responsibility and it must result in work. President Clinton's 
plan does all of that.
  Now, I know it will not get through the legislative process 
unchanged. I, myself, expect to introduce some amendments to the 
President's program. But the plan that he is announcing in Kansas City 
today must be the beginning of an effort that passes welfare reform in 
this Congress--and the sooner the better--the sooner we can give the 
American people a system of welfare that is nothing more than temporary 
aid for those who have no job, not a permanent trap for those who have 
no hope, the better America will be.
  Mr. President, finally, in March of this year, I introduced the 
Welfare Reform Through State Innovation Act. I am very proud and 
grateful that some of its provisions are in the President's plan; some 
others are not. They are designed to complement the administration's 
national changes in welfare by giving the States wider latitude to 
experiment with the kinds of cutting-edge reform ideas that, frankly, 
are not ready to be implemented at the national level because we do 
know what impact they will have on people's lives.
  I hope that, as we consider and pass a national welfare reform plan, 
we will include in it such ideas for State experiments. In that way, we 
can prepare the way for additional national changes in the years to 
come and build on the critical and courageous process of national 
welfare reform that President Clinton begins today.
  Mr. President, I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  Mr. MITCHELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.

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