[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 41 (Monday, March 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H2660]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         WELFARE: A BETTER WAY

  (Mr. NORWOOD asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, someone once defined the Federal welfare 
system as the result of Americans wanting--in the worst way--to help 
those who have fallen behind.
  There must be a way to help people without trapping them in 
dependency, robbing their self-respect, suffocating their initiative, 
and paving their way to lives of despair, illiteracy, and illegitimate 
behavior.
  That better way is now working its way through the deliberative 
legislative process here in the House of Representatives and will be 
before this body in the next few days.
  Foremost, this new approach incorporates the realization that the 
Federal Government is incapable of undertaking the experiments to 
produce a new welfare system.
  To fulfill that role, we would designate the States as laboratories 
of innovation, reform, and effective transformation of the welfare 
system.
  We also would eliminate an expensive, unnecessary layer of Federal 
bureaucracy whose role has been to look over the shoulders of the 
States and impose a one-size-fits-all straitjacket to restrain 
administrators for searching for better ways to deliver help to those 
in need.


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