[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 54 (Thursday, March 23, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H3718]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           TEENAGE PREGNANCY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Calvert). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Smith] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, throughout the welfare debate 
we have argued about just about everything. And when I came in tonight 
and heard a little bit of discussion about religion, I realized just 
about how far crazy it had gone.
  We have argued about how much the school lunch program is supposed to 
go up, at least it is going up, and we have argued over whether Federal 
programs work better than the local ones. But we are not talking about 
cutting them out, just who controls them.
  We have even argued about who understands compassion better. But if 
there is one thing that we have agreed on, without exception, is the 
fact that our welfare system is failing. The intent of the system was 
always a noble one, because Americans are kind, loving, noble people. 
And it was to help those people that were down get back up on their 
feet and become independent and help those that could not help 
themselves because of severe handicaps or they were too young until 
they did not need help any longer.
  And for awhile, that is what it was. But then like so many other 
government bureaucracies, it began to grow. People started taking 
advantage of it and using it, a practice that has hurt taxpayers. But I 
want to tell you something, if it only hurt taxpayers, it would not be 
so bad. But you know, welfare has spawned a social disease that is 
suddenly destroying our society. And that social disease is 
illegitimacy. It is babies being born without daddies.
  Today the number of illegitimate births in our country is 30 percent. 
In some major towns, it is 50 percent. That means that we have a major, 
major problem in our society.
  Now, this would not be too bad if it were not that we could look to 
the inner cities and see that it is worse. Inner city poor, there are 
80 percent born out of a married family in the black inner city poor 
neighborhoods.
  It is interesting that we have been so compassionate as some of us 
were marching liberals in the 1960s that we said it did not make any 
difference if a baby was born out of wedlock. But I want to stand here 
tonight and tell you that I was wrong when I was a marching liberal in 
the 1960s with long ironed hair, because now we see what has happened 
in this society. We see little girls having babies in their own 
apartments, where older guys are fathering, not teenagers, folks, they 
are fathering half of those children, a moral decay, a loss of life for 
those young teenagers.
  But what I want to talk about briefly is those children that we are 
talking about being so compassionate to as we fight to keep their 
mothers in poverty by giving them welfare when they are teenagers.
  Do you know that these little girls that are born are three times as 
likely to be little girls that become teenage girls that also go on 
welfare and have babies when they are still babies?
  Did you know these little boys are multi-times, depending on the 
cities, more likely to go into gangs if they do not of a mommy and 
daddy at both home? Do you also know that they are born weaker, lower 
birth weight? Do you know that?
  I think that that is what we are addressing with this welfare reform. 
We are talking about a new world that says no to the liberal 1960s and 
some of us are going to stand here and we are going to apologize for 
what we did when we thought telling those young girls yes was okay. We 
are going to say, we know that was wrong, that the most compassionate 
thing we can do for these little kids and their kids is to not give 
them cash grants, to not go on and reward the wrong decisions, to not 
reward sometimes their mothers who encourage them in some tenement 
house to go get pregnant so they can get the welfare that they have 
learned to live on.
  The Republican welfare bill does some wonderful things that we can 
see in the future and be proud of. It says we will take care of these 
kids and that we will make sure we take care of their babies but we 
will not lock them into poverty.


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