[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 54 (Thursday, March 23, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3727-H3730]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                             WELFARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Calvert). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Lewis], is 
recognized for 35 minutes as a designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield my time 
right now to my good friend from Ohio to start us off this evening.
  Mr. CHABOT. I thank my good friend from Kentucky [Mr. Lewis], for 
yielding this time. What we are going to be doing is discussing the 
welfare system in this country and why Republicans and some Democrats 
as well believe that the welfare has been so destructive in this 
country that we feel very strongly that we need to change the welfare 
system dramatically.
  We have heard a lot of Democrats this week, and in fact since I have 
been a Member of Congress, be cute when they refer to the Contract With 
America, and they keep saying it is a Contract On America, which is 
ludicrous.
  It is a Contract With America. This is a document that we all signed. 
After talking with people all across this country, and they said these 
are the things that we want. If we elect a majority of Republicans, 
these are the things we would like you to change when you get there.
  Well, the people in my district saw fit to send me here, and one of 
the main things they wanted to change was the welfare system. They 
realized, I heard over and over again, that the welfare system is 
wrong. We spend far too much money on welfare, and most of that money 
is counterproductive. We are hurting more people than we are helping on 
welfare.
  I was a school teacher in Cincinnati for a number of years in an 
inner city school. I worked for the recreation department in an inner 
city area, and I saw kids over and over and over again who came from 
homes where there was no father in the home.
  The vast majority of these families did not have a father in the 
home. They had the government, in effect, as their father. The Federal 
Government sent a welfare check every month. No father in the home, no 
father figure. They expected the government to pay for them from 
basically from cradle to grave, and that is what we have to change.
  We have got kids in homes all across this country who never see an 
adult in the home go to work. We have to change that. The welfare 
system is broken.
  What I think we are hearing on the other side of the aisle, what we 
have been hearing the past couple of days from particularly the liberal 
Democrats on the other side of the aisle is the last gasps of a dying 
philosophy, a philosophy that says the government is the way to go, the 
government owes everybody a living, people do not have to work, people 
do not have to be responsible for their own lives, American families 
are
 to support other people's kids.

  Not only do they have to support their own kids, but the Federal 
Government takes a large portion of their money, sends it up here to 
Washington, it gets eaten up in this bureaucracy, this welfare 
bureaucracy.
  Some of it gets sent back to the States, and much of that money is 
wasted, and it is counterproductive. We have to change that, and that 
is what we are here to talk about this evening.
  I am very pleased that I am joined here by my good friend from Ohio 
[Martin Hoke], and a very good friend from Arizona [J.D. Hayworth], who 
are also going to contribute and talk in this colloquy.
  Mr. HOKE. May I ask the gentleman a question?
  Mr. CHABOT. Absolutely.
  Mr. HOKE. Does this sound familiar? Who said, ``I will eliminate 
welfare as we know it today''? Does that sound familiar?
  Mr. CHABOT. I believe it was our President who said that in the 
campaign a couple of years ago.
  Mr. HOKE. A couple years ago, 1992, all summer 1992. Was this a 
sucker punch?
  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Yes.
  Mr. HOKE. Is that what was going on? Now, in the 103d Congress I do 
not recall any welfare reform bill whatsoever ever coming to the floor 
of this Congress.
  Mr. CHABOT. That is exactly right. Of course, that is the same 
President who told us he was going to give us a middle-class tax cut 
and then did just the opposite and raised taxes on the American people. 
That is one reason that the American people said enough and changed 
Congress and sent folks like us here to change Congress.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. If my friends from Ohio would yield, and I recognize my 
friend from Kentucky controls the time, and as I have been checking in 
other quarters, a certain school from Kentucky controls the basketball 
game tonight.
  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Good
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Between the University of Kentucky and Arizona State. 
Much to his delight, much to my chagrin. But it really brings forth a 
description of both that basketball tournament and I believe it is safe 
to say what has transpired here in the halls of the Congress, and that 
is March madness that is really without parallel. I 
 [[Page H3728]] could not help but notice my friends on the other side 
during the course of their 35-minute special order enlist the help of 
one of their aides, and I am not here to demean that aide in any ways, 
but I thought it was very interesting, a scroll that was festooned 
about his person, I suppose in documentation of the working poor, and I 
would salute the working poor, indeed we are holding them up and 
championing their efforts. I listened with interest to the gentlelady 
from Ohio, but I could not help but notice the similarity of that 
gentleman working to provide that visual aid, if you will.
                              {time}  2330

  And instead of really offering stirring testimony to the working 
poor, it really resembled someone wearing a bed sheet as a ghost as if 
this were Halloween, and I could not help notice the parallels because 
this is what it has come down to, a debate from the other side largely 
devoid of fact, filled with sentiment, much of it heartfelt, but also 
much of it, I would say, calculated, designed, to scare everyone in 
America; first the elderly, then the working poor, and now the 
children.
  Children have been used in this debate as pawns in the political 
process, teachers requesting that students write letters not born of 
any heartfelt philosophical viewpoint on the part of the young 
students, but born of an indoctrination of a failed liberal state.
  Again I want to say we are not here to demonize those who are down on 
their luck. We are not here to discourage the working poor. Quite the 
contrary. We salute their efforts, but what we are here to do in this 
104th Congress is to change for the better a failed system, perhaps 
noble in its intent, but somehow glaringly ignoble because it deprives 
the very people it purports to help, it deprives them of their dignity, 
it deprives them of the opportunity to work, and it robs from them not 
only their rights as individuals, but their responsibilities in a free 
society.
  Mr. HOKE. I wonder if I could ask you to yield some time here because 
I thought the gentleman from Vermont began the remarks of the earlier 
special order with what was a pretty honest beginning, and that was to 
say that we have not spent enough time actually debating the underlying 
issue here, and the underlying issue has to do with causation, and, by 
the way, I think I should point out with respect to the remarks of the 
gentleman from Vermont, whom I have a lot of respect for, he has 
pointed out a number of times that he is an Independent and the only 
Independent in the Congress, but I think it is probably only fair and 
instructive to state that he votes with the Democrats almost all of the 
time. His committee seniority is with the Democrats, he sits with the 
Democrats on the committees that he is on, and, as the mayor of 
Burlington, he was not an Independent, he was a socialist. So I do not 
know if that means that the Democrats are not liberal enough for him, 
but I think that--I mean just in the interests of fairness I think 
those things ought to be pointed out. But I think he was right to ask 
the question, ``Why aren't we talking more about the root causes,'' and 
what he would say is that the root causes of the behaviors, and the 
behaviors he is talking about I think are illegitimacy, developmental 
problems in school, the chances of being on welfare as a welfare child 
becoming a welfare mother herself, a welfare child becoming a male on 
welfare himself. Those behaviors, he clearly stated, are the result of 
poverty.
  What I would like to do is explore that just a little bit because 
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democratic Senator from New York, has written 
extensively on this, and he wrote in 1964, quote, poverty is the 
principal reason why these young men fail to meet those physical and 
mental standards. He was saying poverty is the problem; in 1964 he said 
that. Then in 1989, in his book ``Towards a Post-Industrial Society,'' 
he wrote, ``Why did I write that this was the result, these behaviors 
were the result, of poverty in 1965? Why did I write that? Why did I 
not write that poverty was the result of this; ignorance?''
  As Dr. Johnson observed, I do not know how to
   describe my understanding of social structure a quarter of a century 
ago except to say that it was not especially formed. He went on to say, 
``What I had not adequately grasped was the degree to which these 
unequal distributions of property were, in fact, themselves dependent 
upon a still more powerful act, the behavior of individuals in 
communities. In other words, I had not,''--Daniel Patrick Moynihan--``I 
had not myself understood that it is the behaviors that have 
fundamental impact on the results as opposed to the result, poverty, 
being the agent that causes the behaviors,'' and that goes precisely to 
what the gentleman from Vermont was talking about, and it truly does 
inform the differences in the debate and the differences in how you can 
come up with an in-government-we-trust solution, which is what we have 
gotten from the other side as opposed to in individual responsibility 
in the private sector, in neighborhoods, in communities we trust, in G-
d we trust attitude that we are trying to reform welfare on this side.

  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. The bottom line is that the War on Poverty has 
not taken care of poverty. I ask, ``Isn't it true we have more poverty 
now than when we started?''
  Mr. CHABOT. That is exactly what has happened.
  As my colleagues know, it really started getting out of control 
during the so-called Great Society, the Lyndon Johnson years in the 
sixties, and it has grown worse, and worse, and worse, and illegitimacy 
has grown in tremendous numbers since that time as have welfare 
payments. They have both been pretty consistently going up, and you 
know the real tragedy of the way the current system works now is 
basically our government, under the way welfare works, it makes a deal 
with welfare mothers all over this country. I says:
  ``We'll send you a check every month. We'll get you food stamps, free 
housing, free cash money. You got to do two things though to get this 
money. No. 1, you got to not work. You're not allowed to work. And the 
other thing: You can't get married to anybody who works.''
  Mr. Speaker, that is just a prescription for tragedy, and that is 
what happened in this country, and that is what we are going to change 
starting tomorrow.
  Mr. HOKE. Can you imagine saying to your daughter
   as she is reaching the age of maturity, 19, 20, 21, 22, getting 
ready to leave home; you say, ``Well, honey, I want you to know that we 
will always be here for you. We're always going to be behind you 100 
percent, and we're going to support you financially. We're going to be 
there, you can count on us, but there are two conditions. No. 1 is 
you've got to agree--it's wonderful you have kids; that's great. But 
you got to agree you won't get married. And No. 2, you got to agree you 
won't go to work, and we'll continue to support you.''

  That is what we do as a Federal Government. We are saying to your 
son, ``Son, listen. You know I'm always going to be there for you, but 
I want you to know one thing. You can go out and father as many 
children by as many different women as you want; that's great. But just 
don't marry them, don't get married, and I don't want you to work 
either. As long as you do those things, we'll continue to support 
you.''
  It is insane, it is perverse. What a perverse norm. What a sick and 
twisted form of compassion that is. None of us would do that as 
parents, and yet that is exactly what the Federal Government is doing. 
How could you possibly expect anything but the kind of results that we 
are getting?
  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Absolutely, and you know the other side keeps 
saying Contract on America instead of what we actually signed was a 
Contract With America, and I would like to say right now the Contract 
With America is not a Republican contract, it is an American contract 
that the Republicans signed onto to do the will of the American people.
  And let me say if there is a Contract on America, it has been the 
last 30 years of a welfare system that has destroyed individuals and 
families.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. And the incredible observation that we hear from the 
other side--our good friend from Wisconsin [Mr. Roth] says it is the 
yeah-buts. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke], my friend, had another 
description earlier on this. It boggles the mind, and I believe it is 
summed up in Marvin Olasky's new book entitled, 
 [[Page H3729]] ``The Tragedy of American Compassion,'' and, Mr. 
Speaker, it is wonderful to have this time here tonight for a little 
straight talk among friends and to realize that we are poised to change 
this system for the better.
                              {time}  2340

  Mr. HAYWORTH. I wish we could say that in every circumstance in every 
human endeavor things will change for the better, but I think that 
would be both practically and intellectually dishonest. We harbor no 
delusions that this is a perfect plan. But we have seen the height of 
imperfection and the notion of tragedy born of the last 30 years of so-
called compassion.
  To spend in excess of $5 trillion, and understand we are just 
approaching that in terms of our national debt, and that in itself is a 
tragedy, but to spend in excess of $5 trillion on programs noble in 
their intent, since we should always assume the best of those with whom 
we disagree, but to have them fail so completely.
  As has often been noted during the course of this debate, if you were 
going to declare war on the American family, on responsibility, on our 
very fabric as a society, you could not have done better than the so-
called war on poverty, because it, in essence, changed the scope of how 
we react as a society; and it took away the notion that for every right 
there is a responsibility.
  Indeed, it seems that now the defenders of the old order would say, 
``I am, therefore I am entitled,'' instead of, ``I understand as an 
American that I have rights and those rights are coupled with 
responsibilities and my rights stretch only as far as the rights of 
another, and it is my responsibility not to infringe on another's 
rights.''
  Instead, now we have a situation where the working poor and those who 
are not classified in the working poor, those who are fortunate enough 
to prosper in this society, many who come to this Nation from other 
shores legally to live the American dream, find themselves paying and 
paying and paying into this system.
  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Hayworth, I just want to add to that. 
Another tragedy, and you have just led up to that, is that the average 
family, the working family, we hear the working class and the working 
family, the working family today is paying on an average 40 percent of 
their income in State and local and Federal taxes, 40-plus. If you add 
in the hidden taxes, it is probably reaching close to 50 percent, 
utility taxes, gasoline taxes. That is a tragedy.
  We wonder why mothers and fathers are both having to work. Because 
they have to pay their Federal bill. That is a burden that cannot go 
on. And that is why we are trying to fix this system so that we can 
have good, wholesome, strong, prosperous families all across this 
Nation.
  Mr. CHABOT. That is an excellent point.
  The thing that really gets me is when you think of the average 
middle-class families out there where sometimes one parent, sometimes 
both parents are working, they are trying to rase their kids, they are 
obeying the laws, they are paying their taxes and so much of their 
money comes up here to Washington or in some instances goes to the 
State capitals. But it goes to government. And then in our welfare 
system we then send those dollars back to people who basically are not 
supporting their own kids.
  And as the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] had said, so many of these 
fathers are going around fathering kids and are just assuming somebody 
else is going to take care of their kids. Because that is the way it 
works, quite frankly. Let us fact it. They are fathering kids now, and 
they are not supporting those kids, and we are doing it. The taxpayers, 
the middle-class people out there, are paying higher taxes so they 
cannot take care of their families to the degree they want to because 
they are sending their money up here to Washington.
  I was watching a program a couple of weeks ago, it was 48 Hours, on 
welfare reform. I found an excellent segment on there. They had a young 
woman, single mother in a wheelchair. This woman was working two jobs 
to support her own kids, and she was saying, ``I would not go on 
welfare. I am going to work as hard as I can. I am going to support my 
own kids.''
  But the thing that she was complaining about was that so much of her 
money was taken in taxes and given to other people who would not 
support their own kids.
  That is not fair. That is what is wrong with the system. That is why 
we have got to fix it. And we begin to do that tomorrow when we finally 
vote for welfare reform.
  Mr. HOKE. I thought one of the most moving speeches I have heard here 
recently was from our good friend, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. 
Norwood] earlier this evening. I do not know if you all heard it, but 
he spoke about his own father. He spoke about the absolute necessity of 
fathers in our lives.
  I thought of my father, who created an example. He created on a daily 
basis an example of integrity and character. And when I did not measure 
up to it, he made sure that I knew it, and he made sure that I was 
accountable, not always in ways that I particularly appreciated at the 
time but I do sure appreciate today.
  It did occur to me that there is absolutely no substitute for that. 
There is no substitute whatsoever on Earth. The government cannot be 
the substitute. There is no substitute.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is absolutely right.
  And what we have done is we have taken an uncle, Uncle Sam, and not 
even plugged him as a surrogate father. Instead, we have made him Big 
Brother in Orwellian fashion, in 1994 instead of 1984.
  And now, 1995, we have a significant segment of a once-proud 
political party engaged in Orwellian newspeak and the tactics of fear, 
saying that opportunity is somehow perverse, saying that work and 
responsibility, while giving a rhetorical tip of the cap to those 
virtues but maintaining that it is the government that is the sole 
generator of same, and I do not believe that we have seen for those, 
and I know you have run across people like this.
  I think one of the throw-away lines we encounter from time to time 
is, ``There is not a dime's worth of difference between the two major 
parties.'' I would beg to differ a great deal.
  But the irony will be we will see a number of fair-minded Democrats 
come with us because, as we have seen on other items in this Contract, 
when you get away from the smoke and mirrors, when you get away from 
the Orwellian newspeak, when you get away from the tragedy of a once-
proud party now bereft of new ideas, indeed one publication on the Hill 
said of the Deal plan that the leadership of the other side grudgingly 
accepted that as an alternative.
  Mr. HOKE. I have to share something with you.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Sure.
  Mr. HOKE. Name that tune. Name that speaker. Because if we are going 
to bash the Democrats, and maybe there is something that we can learn 
here, ``The lessons of history confirmed by the evidence immediately 
before me show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief 
induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive 
to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer 
a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.''
  Who spake those words?
                              {time}  2350

  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  Mr. HOKE. Franklin D. Roosevelt. The father of the modern Democratic 
Party spoke those words. John Kennedy spoke not dissimilar words in his 
inaugural address. He inspired me, inspired I know many of my 
colleagues. And yet somehow that has gone so, so incredibly awry.
  I want to share, if I can, one other item, maybe to lighten the mood 
a little. This is from P.J. O'Rourke, that I think you might enjoy. He 
says in his preface to the Mystery of Government, ``I have only one 
firm belief about the American political system, and that is this:''
  You have to remember P.J. O'Rourke. I feel a very special kinship 
with P.J., because we are both sort of refugees from the sixties in 
disguise. I know we do not talk about this very much, but I know there 
are many on this side of the aisle who also have been reclaimed from 
the sixties as well.
  [[Page H3730]] But he says:

       I have only one firm belief about the American political 
     system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus 
     is a Democrat.
       God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a 
     stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great 
     believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly 
     accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern 
     for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is 
     politically connected, socially powerful and holds the 
     mortgage on literally everything in the world. God is 
     difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into 
     God's heavenly country club.
       Santa Claus is another matter. He's cute. He's 
     nonthreatening. He's always cheerful. And he loves animals. 
     He may know who's been naughty and who's been nice, but he 
     never does anything about it. He'd give everyone everything 
     they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard 
     for charities, and he's famously generous to the poor. Santa 
     Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no 
     such thing as Santa Claus.

  Thank you, P.J. O'Rourke.
  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. You know, there is one thing though that I 
have noticed in the debate the last few days that I do not think our 
friends on the other side of the aisle are too willing to give, and 
that is a tax break to the middle class of this country.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. What I find amazing, and we do not want to move too 
quickly, because I think that we have almost numbed the American 
people, I hope at the end of these 100 days, when we enact these 
sweeping changes, I know the reaction of the liberal media in this town 
and the folks who make up this culture, almost diametrically opposed to 
the reforms we bring, they will try to stifle a yawn and say, ``Well, 
so what?'' We can predice that reaction.
  But the American people, and this is the key, as my friend from 
Kentucky points out, the American people recognize that their work 
helps generate the wealth that they have a stake in that wealth by 
their very labor, and that they are entitled to keep more of their 
hard-earned money, and send less of it to Washington, D.C.
  My friend from Ohio, from Cincinnati, said it so well, as there is a 
myopia, or a tunnel vision when it comes to this topic. So many times I 
have heard other friends, and maybe we just disagree, talk about the 
money they will quote-unquote ``lose'' in certain projects, but they 
fail to understand this: It is not the government's money. The 
President may have proposed it in the largest tax increase in American 
history. It may have won by one vote in this Chamber, in the 103d 
Congress, by one vote in the Chamber in the 103d Congress. It may have 
been foisted upon the American people in the name of so-called deficit 
reduction, even though those numbers we know are subject to sleight of 
hand, or shall we say a charitable interpretation by the White House.
  But the fact is, the money does not belong to the Federal Government. 
It belongs to those who labor those hours, who earn that money, and who 
give in unparalleled fashion freely, voluntarily, into our tax system, 
obeying our tax code in so many ways. And it is not the Federal 
Government's money. It is just interesting to see that interpretation 
that would be so statused in its approach that it would begin and end 
with the Federal Government.
  To the contrary, we say. It begins with the
   individual and it end with the individual, and responsibility rests 
with the individual, working together in corporate fashion, for 
education, for spiritual enlightenment, and, yes, for government, based 
on a society of law, and for civil order.

  And it is an all-encompassing picture that recognizes the sanctity 
and the primacy of the individual and the freedom and the liberty he or 
she enjoys in this Nation, in this constitutional Republic. We place 
our faith not only in God, but ultimately in the American people to 
decide what is best for themselves.
  Mr. CHABOT. I have heard this, and I think your points are absolutely 
correct, J.D., and I know we are almost out of time, so we probably 
need to wrap it up.
  I guess a couple points I want to make. One thing is I have heard the 
term mean-spirited so many times the last couple of days from our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle that if I hear it one more 
time I think I am going to scream. But I think there is no question in 
my mind that there could be nothing more mean-spirited to the kids of 
this country than the welfare system that we have got now. It destroys 
lives; it will continue to do so until we change it. We are ready 
finally to change it.
  The school lunch program, they still keep saying, I heard it tonight, 
that we are going to cut the school lunch program. We are increasing 
the funding to the school lunch programs all across this country. What 
we are doing is we are cutting out the bureaucrats here in Washington, 
and we are sending the money directly to the States. Let the school 
teachers and the local school boards and the parents decide how they 
want to spend their own money. Not our money, their money.
  Finally, I think the bottom line, and I have only been here 2 months, 
but what I have seen from my colleagues such as the gentlemen that are 
here this evening, the difference I think between this side and the 
folks on the other side of the aisle, is the bottom line is the folks 
on the other side over there think that Washington knows best, that the 
decisions ought to be made up here where we are tonight. We ought to 
decide how the American people's money should be spent, that Washington 
knows better than the people all over this country.
  I do not believe that. I think the decisions
   should be made and those families, the moms and dads ought to decide 
how they want to spend money for their kids, not the bureaucrats up 
here in Washington. Despite all the rhetoric I have heard, calling us 
mean spirited, we do not care about kids, for God's sake, I have kids 
myself, a 5-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter, probably in bed 
right now so they cannot hear me talking, hopefully, because they have 
school tomorrow, but I think the American people can see through all 
this rhetoric.

  Mr. HAYWORTH. What is more mean spirited than leaving an ever-
increasing debt and burden and responsibility like that on the younger 
generation and on generations yet unborn? The time to change it is now. 
The steps are being taken in these first 100 days. We take another 
major step tomorrow with welfare reform.
  Mr. HOKE. Steve, I absolutely agree with you. I think the American 
people, I have absolute utter confidence in their ability to discern. 
They cast their ballots last November. They asked that we keep our 
word, we keep our promises. We are doing everything we can to do that.
  Frankly, I think we are right where we ought to be, we are on the 
right path. We have to keep our shoulder to the wheel and keep pushing 
and keep telling the truth, because it is obvious there is a massive 
disinformation campaign going on. We have got to cut through that.
  But you know what? We do not have to do all of that work. We have to 
do a lot of the work, but the public is not going to be fooled. The 
people will find out. They will find out on their own. They care enough 
to discern it, to require the information, and to find it, and I am 
very confident about that.
  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. I think it goes back to what I said earlier, 
that we are keeping a contract that we signed, that the American people 
gave to us. We found out what they wanted, and we said we are going to 
do it, and we are. We are going to keep our word and we are going to do 
it. And we are going to reform the welfare system and make it work for 
people that have real needs.
  Mr. CHABOT. I think the American people are a whole lot smarter than 
the people on the other side of the aisle give them credit for.


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