[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 44 (Thursday, March 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2973-H2974]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WELFARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Talent] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, on March 21, the House will take up 
comprehensive, real and historic welfare reform. The object of that 
bill will be an historic and fundamental change in the direction of our 
welfare policy, away from a failed system that is destroying the poor 
and towards a system of relief 
[[Page H2974]] and a system of relief and assistance that is based on 
marriage, on family, on work and on personal responsibility.
  Mr. Speaker, how is the welfare system hurting the poor? First and 
foremost, it is destroying their families. Let us take a look at this 
graph here on my left.
  In 1965, Mr. Speaker, one out of 15 children in the United States, 
about 6 percent, were born out of wedlock. Federal and State welfare 
spending at that time was about 30 billion. Today the out-of-wedlock 
birth rate is one out of three. It has increased by six times since 
1965. The welfare spending has gone up 10 times to about $300 billion a 
year.
  Welfare spending has not brought us a decrease in poverty, as I will 
show in a minute. It has caused an explosion in illegitimacies. The 
best social studies also agree. A controlled study in New Jersey showed 
that a small restriction in the growth of welfare benefits caused a 30 
percent reduction in illegitimacy. And June O'Neill, who is the current 
head of the Congressional Budget Office, conducted a study showing that 
a 50 percent increase in AFDC and food stamps led to a 43 percent 
increase in the out-of-wedlock birth rate.
  President Clinton has said there is no question that if we reduced 
Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and I am sure he meant 
substituting that with a different form of assistance for the poor, it 
would be some incentive for people not to have dependent children out 
of wedlock.
  So history, social science, the President and common sense all agree: 
the welfare system as it is currently structured with its current 
incentives destroys families. It promotes illegitimacy by promising 
young men and women a measure of security and independence through a 
welfare package, but if and only if they have a child without being 
married, without having a work skill and earlier than they otherwise 
would. That means that the existing welfare system causes poverty, 
because, Mr. Speaker, work and marriage are essential to eliminating 
poverty. The best antipoverty programs are family and work.
  I invite the House to look at the next graph. The red line in that 
graph shows the poverty rate in the postwar era. It has declined 
steadily all throughout that era until about 1965, when it reached 
approximately 15 percent.
  The blue shaded area on the graph shows State and Federal spending on 
welfare since 1948. As the graph shows, that welfare spending held 
basically steady until about 1965, when the Great Society programs were 
started. At that time it exploded and increased by a factor of 10 times 
to about $300 billion.
  At the same time as we were increasing welfare spending by a factor 
of 10 times, the poverty rate actually increased slightly. It was a 
little under 15 percent in 1965, and now it is a little bit over 15 
percent.
  In the last generation, the Federal Government has transferred 
trillions of dollars to the poor. But the welfare system at the same 
time has destroyed their families and, therefore, their incentives to 
seek the American dream for themselves and their children.

                              {time}  2120

  It is as if you are bailing out a boat with one hand while you were 
pouring water into the boat with the other.
  Mr. Speaker, as we proceed through this debate on welfare we should 
remember two principles. The debate over welfare should not be about 
blaming the poor. It is the Federal Government that has perversely 
given material assistance to the poor on the conditions that they 
accept the kind of innervating spiritual poverty. We should not reform 
this system because people on welfare are abusing it, although that 
does happen. We should reform the welfare system because the system has 
been abusing people on welfare.
  The second principle is this: Welfare reform shouldn't mean 
abandoning the poor. America must stand or fall together as a people 
with common ideals and aspirations. Welfare reform should mean bringing 
back the welfare system to reliance on those ideals.
  My friend, the distinguished freshman from Oklahoma [Mr. Watts] put 
it this way. He says that for the past 30 years the Federal Government 
has measured the success of welfare by how many people we could get on 
AFDC and food stamps and medicaid.
  We need to measure success by a different index. Real welfare reform 
means measuring success this way by how many people we can get off of 
AFDC, food stamps and medicaid and into a life of dignity and hope. 
That is what the fight for welfare reform over the coming weeks in this 
House should be about. It is a fight that we can and must and will win 
for all of the American people.


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