[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2734-H2735]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        FIXING THE WELFARE MESS

  (Mr. RIGGS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks).
  Mr. RIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I first of all will join with my colleagues 
who have used adjectives such as pathetic and audacious to describe the 
fear tactics and the continuing politics of envy that we hear coming 
from the other side of the aisle. I will add another, 
 [[Page H2735]] though, adjective to describe what I have been seeing 
take place, and that is unconscionable. It is unconscionable for the 
House Democratic Party to treat welfare recipients as a political 
constituency for political gain.
  Mr. Speaker, Americans have said that they are sick of a failed 
liberal welfare system that traps people in a cycle of dependency. Five 
million families, 9 million kids on AFDC, and at any given time over 50 
percent of those families have been on AFDC welfare for over 10 years.
  It is a system that ruins generation after generation, a system that 
has cost us as a country $5 trillion while making the situation worse. 
Two out of three black babies born out of wedlock, 20 percent of white 
children born out of wedlock.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people want us to fix the welfare mess 
before it does any more damage and fix it, we will.


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