[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 53 (Wednesday, March 22, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H3424]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    CURRENT WELFARE SYSTEM IS CRUEL

  (Mr. HOKE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, what is the legacy of the welfare state after 
35 years and spending $5.3 trillion? Well, one out of every three 
babies born in America is born out of wedlock. Two out of every three 
American babies of African descent are born out of wedlock. From 1960 
to 1991 homicide deaths among children under 19 have quadrupled. Among 
black teenagers, murder is now by far the leading cause of death.
  It is a perverse form of compassion that encourages children to have 
children by themselves and then traps those same children, both mother 
and child, in a dead-end cycle of Government dependency. Nothing could 
be more cruel to children than a system that does that.
  If that is not failure, then how do you measure failure?
  This is what we have gotten with 35 years of Great Society welfare 
state.


                          ____________________