[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 133 (Wednesday, September 21, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 21, 1994]



                             WELFARE REFORM

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, with the end of the 103d Congress 
nearing, it seems clear that we will adjourn without enacting welfare 
reform. The administration and Senator Moynihan laid a solid foundation 
for reforming our welfare system: One that offers support but requires 
people to work; one that keeps families together and encourages self-
sufficiency and responsibility. These were the values I learned growing 
up in a poor, immigrant home in New Jersey. Unfortunately, the erosion 
of these values and our inability to provide decent jobs for all our 
citizens have turned our welfare system into a self-perpetuating cycle.
  We should make welfare reform a top priority in the next Congress. 
Our welfare system is a mess. It hurts those it is supposed to help. It 
costs too much and does too little. Instead of moving people out of 
poverty, it often keeps them in poverty: it encourages dependency, 
stifles initiative, and becomes a way of life.
  More than 63 percent of all welfare recipients will be on welfare for 
more than 2 years throughout their lifetimes; 25 percent will be on the 
rolls for more than 8 years. For most of the people who get jobs and 
leave the rolls, employment tends to be temporary. Wages are too low 
and jobs are seasonal or sporadic: the net result is that after a 
period of employment, people return to the rolls. That is a sign of 
systemic failure. Welfare is no longer a temporary helping hand in 
difficult times. It is not achieving the goal of making people 
independent and self-sufficient.
  Mr. President, we need to reform the welfare system to move welfare 
recipients into real jobs. Welfare began as a temporary, transitional 
program; it was supposed to be a helping hand, not a long-term income 
support program. The only way for welfare recipients to get a foothold 
in our economic and social mainstream is to get a job.
  In today's economy, however, low-skilled jobs that pay an above 
welfare wage are not that easy to find. Ironically enough, we face a 
situation in which work is often not economically worthwhile: you get 
more on welfare than you do from a no-benefits, minimum wage job.
  We need to address the health care, job training, and educational 
needs of welfare recipients to provide the incentives and skills to 
move them into the work force. We began this process in 1988 by 
enacting the JOBS Program in the Family Support Act, which I supported. 
Unfortunately, the JOBS Program was not fully funded by many States and 
many welfare recipients are on waiting lists--waiting to get job 
training and remain on the welfare rolls instead of on payrolls. 
Welfare recipients will leave the rolls permanently when they get a 
job. The way to get a good job is to have good job skills--job training 
and welfare go hand in hand.
  Just as important is teaching the discipline and responsibility which 
come in a job. That is why there should be a limit in the amount of 
time one can be on welfare. A consensus has developed to set a time 
limit on welfare, after which recipients must take a job: one in the 
private sector if that is available, or one in the public sector if 
that is the last resort. This has to be an essential element of any 
reform strategy.
  Welfare reform should also require that parents take responsibility 
for their kids. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Right now, 
women living below the poverty level only receive 43 percent of the 
court-ordered child support they are supposed to get Fathers are 
shifting the burden of caring for their children to the State and the 
taxpayers. That is unacceptable and unjustified. We must be more 
aggressive in tracking down noncustodial parents and making them pay 
child support.
  Mr. President, welfare reform should move people off the welfare 
rolls into jobs; it should provide incentives to work and to keep 
families together. It should emphasize personal responsibility and 
initiative. If we enact universal health care, provide jobs and job 
training, enforce our child support law, and require work, fewer 
children will grow up in poverty and in single parent families. Welfare 
reform should steer recipients into productive jobs and help install a 
work ethic. Such reform can break the cycle of poverty and dependence 
that engulf too many of our children growing up in welfare families 
today.

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