[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 55 (Friday, March 24, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3793-H3794]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


     THE MOST IMPORTANT WEEK OF THE 104TH CONGRESS: WELFARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Jones). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Funderburk] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FUNDERBURK. Mr. Speaker, I said 2 nights ago that this was the 
most important week of the 104th Congress. This week we decided between 
two very different visions of America. The first vision is offered by 
the same people who stood guard over 30 years of disintegrating 
families, children having children, burned out cities, a 30-percent 
illegitimacy rate, and three generations of Americans who do nothing 
but sit at home waiting for the next government check to arrive.
  The Democrats are the guardians of business as usual; more taxes, 
more bureaucrats, more Washington. Having lost faith in the American 
dream, they have nothing to offer except more of the same shopworn 
programs which degrade and enslave millions. They have made generations 
of Americans nothing more than animals in the Government barn. They 
promise you happiness in exchange for a handout and the loss of your 
freedom. Their notion of reform is to spend more of other peoples' 
money.
  Take a look at their so-called answers to our Personal Responsibility 
Act. One raises taxes on every business--big and small--in America and 
the other cuts off child tax credits for almost half of the families in 
this country. Each Democratic welfare bill says the Government must 
give you a job and if the State doesn't have any jobs to give it will 
pay someone in the private sector to hire you.
  This is what the liberals have in store for us. This is their version 
of reform: have a child out of wedlock, don't have a job and don't live 
with a man who is working. If you do these things the taxpayer will 
provide you with everything you need. Uncle Sam will give you a check 
each month, with free medical care, free food, and under Mr. Clinton's 
plan, a Federal job and free child care.
  Mr. Speaker, I really feel sorry for the Democrats. They actually 
believe it is an act of kindness to hand able-bodies Americans womb to 
tomb care, demanding nothing in return. They call this $5 trillion 
nightmare that they have created--a system which dooms millions to a 
life of poverty and condemns helpless children to perpetual despair--
compassionate. Their system is not compassionate, their system is 
obscene.
  The ugly sideshow of the liberal's welfare system is the notorious 
child welfare bureaucracy. The massive increase in illegitimacy that 
the liberals want to subsidize has created a horrendous explosion in 
the number of abused and neglected children. As Mona Charen noted 
yesterday, ``social services and charities are overburdened by the 
caseload but they are also overburdened by liberal thinking.'' Clinton 
Democrats are formally committed to a philosophy and practice which in 
most cases sends an abused and neglected child back to the parents who 
have hurt him, all in the name of family preservation. The Republican 
welfare reform bill recognizes this nonsense for the folly that it is. 
We believe that it is a far greater kindness to place a child with 
loving adoptive parents rather than to give an abusive violent parent 
another dozen chances to hurt that child.
  Before I came to Washington, I watched the liberal Democrats and 
their allies in the permanent poverty industry heap scorn upon anyone 
who dared stand up and say that welfare socialism was destroying our 
country from within. But on November 8, 1994 we the people finally rose 
up and said enough is enough. We had enough of the professionally 
compassionate robbing us of our hard-earned money, dumbing down our 
schools, promoting deviant
 behavior and creating a suffocating culture of dependency for our 
poorest families. They had 30 years to do something about welfare and 
they sat on their hands and did nothing.

  Mr. Speaker, I said at the beginning of my remarks that we are 
debating two visions of America. We know where the liberal vision has 
taken us. The second vision--the conservative vision--begins and ends 
with individual liberty. Our view of society is one in which people 
have the right and the opportunity to work, invest, and raise their 
children as they see fit. We have faith in the energy of the American 
people, the liberals have faith in Washington, DC.
  The Republican reform bill takes aim at the heart of the welfare 
problem--the underage mother who enters the welfare rolls after 
conceiving an out-of-wedlock child. Our reform denies benefits to those 
who continue to have children without having any means to independently 
support those children. We also eliminate the Federal middleman and cut 
the heart out of the Washington welfare bureaucracy.
  We send power back to the people. We say the real welfare reformers 
are in the States and counties. These are the people closest to the 
problem. They know their communities' needs. They 
[[Page H3794]] are on the front line in the war against poverty. They 
understand its causes and they will provide the moral and spiritual 
leadership so many of our people so desperately need.
  Mr. Speaker, we were sent to Washington to put people to work and get 
the Government's hand out of working people's pockets. We say if the 
American people give you a hand-up you will find a real job or we will 
cut off your benefits in 2 years.
  Let me tell you where we will be if we do not put a brake on the 
runaway welfare train. Today Federal welfare spending stands at $387 
billion, by 2000 we will spend $537 billion on welfare entitlements. 
The madness has to stop.
  We have an unprecedented opportunity to save the lives of millions of 
children who would otherwise be trapped in the system which has ruined 
previous generations. We cannot be intimidated by the liberals in 
Congress and the media who offer no solutions, only scare tactics. They 
throw out words like cruel and mean but I ask you Mr. Speaker, what is 
more cruel, what is more mean, then to condemn a child to life on the 
liberal welfare dole. That is the cruelest punishment imaginable. We 
cannot allow another generation of American children to fall victim to 
the compassion of the American left. We must be strong, we must be 
bold, and we must act now. Our children deserve no less.

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