[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 53 (Wednesday, March 22, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3549-H3550]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           REFORMING WELFARE
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON. Mr. Speaker, I was going to do a longer special order 
this evening on defense, but listening to some of the comments tonight 
by our colleagues on both sides, I had to come over here and speak 
about the current welfare reform debate and to lend some feeling that I 
have personally.
  My background in coming to the floor tonight to speak on welfare 
reform is not one of being an attorney who has never had to live in an 
area where people of poverty have to survive on a daily basis. I was 
born the youngest of nine children in one of the most distressed 
communities in Pennsylvania. Neither parent was able to complete high 
school because of their having to quit school when they were in sixth 
and eighth grades to help raise their families. Even though we were 
poor and even though we were a blue collar family, my father worked in 
a factory 38 years, we were proud.
  My father was proudest of the fact up until the day he died that 
during the 38 years he worked for the
 plant, ending up making about $6,000 a year when he retired, never 
once did he accept public assistance. There were many times when he was 
out of work because of strikes, because of situations involving labor 
unrest at the factory, but never once did he have to resort to taking 
money from the taxpayers.

  He was proud of that because he felt it was his responsibility to 
support his children. And all of us are better for that spirit.
  I realize all families are not in that situation. My parents were, 
and I am fortunate to have had parents of that caliber. They taught us 
that in the end it is our own responsibility for how far we go and what 
we achieve.
  I went on to go to college, working my way through undergraduate 
school with a student loan, and taught school in one of the second 
poorest communities in our area, Upper Darby right next to west 
Philadelphia.
  Unlike many of my colleagues in here, out of 435 most of them were 
lawyers. When we talk about school lunches I ran a lunch hour in our 
school for 7 years with kids eating lunch, and understand the problems 
and concerns that that brings. I also ran a chapter I program for 3 of 
those years aimed at educationally and economically deprived kids.
  While working as a teacher during the day, I decided to run for mayor 
of my hometown because of the distressed nature of the community and 
the problems we had. All of these experiences were experiences I was 
involved in before coming here, and what bothers me the most is the 
level of debate we hear in the House today that somehow because the 
systems that we are trying to fix have not been addressed in the last 
30 years in a constructive way in terms of change, somehow what we are 
doing is going to harm American young people.
  Somehow what we are trying to do in the welfare reform debate is 
mean-spirited and we really do not care about children. I resent that. 
I have been a teacher and an educator, my wife is a registered nurse. I 
live in a poor community. I helped turn that town around 
[[Page H3550]] as a mayor, as a community activist. I want to do what 
is right for America, but let me tell you the system today does not 
work.
  Over the past 30 years we have had two wars in America. We won one, 
that was the Cold War. We spent $5 trillion on defense. Today the 
Berlin Wall is down. We have seen Communism fall and the investment
 we made worked.

  The second war was the war on poverty. We lost that war and we spent 
about $6 trillion on poverty programs that in inner city areas and in 
areas where I taught school and grew up actually created disincentives 
for people and actually took away self-pride, self-initiative and took 
away the ability of people who were poor to feel good about who they 
are.
  We are trying to change that. We may not get it right the first time, 
but for someone to question our motives, like somehow we do not care 
about kids or somehow we do not care about what people eat is 
absolutely ridiculous. It is not just ridiculous, it is absolutely 
offensive.
  As a Republican who has crossed the arty line on many times, to 
support family and medical leave, strike breaker legislation, efforts 
to deal with programs serving the working people of this country, 
environmental legislation, I take exception to the kind of 
characterization that is occurring on this House floor that says that 
Republicans do not care about people or people problems. That is not 
what we are about.
  We have a series of programs in this country that are not working. 
Talking about school lunch. The largest school district in my district, 
Upper Darby Township, population 100,000, has opted out of the Federal 
school lunch program for almost a decade; even though they border west 
Philadelphia and even though they have 100,000 people in the school 
district, they have chosen voluntarily not to be a part of the school 
lunch program. Now maybe they know something that we do not know, at 
least our Democrat colleagues do not know down here about the school 
lunch program. For almost a decade they have opted out; they do not 
want any of our money; 100,000 people in an urban school district have 
chosen in my district not to partake of the school lunch program.
  Where are the doom and gloom predictions that were supposed to have 
occurred in Upper Darby Township? How could a school district that 
serves a population of 100,000 people that chose not to be in this 
program have their children dying of hunger and starvation? Where are 
the answers from our liberal friends?
  I would hope, Mr. Speaker, that this debate would be on factual 
information, and cut the rhetoric and the garbage coming out of Members 
on both sides of the aisle in terms of welfare reform.


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