[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 57 (Tuesday, March 28, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H3816]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     PROBLEMS IN THE WELFARE SYSTEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, last week and again this morning, I 
happened to witness discussions about a system that we call the welfare 
system.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I grew up in a neighborhood and I had friends and 
where we were was a working class neighborhood, but many of my friends 
and their families were on welfare. I also happened to have served for 
10 years as a county supervisor in the county of San Diego which has a 
welfare system larger than 32 States of this Union.
  Let me tell you as somebody who grew up in the neighborhood and had 
to run the system, anybody who can face off with the American public 
and honestly say what we have called the welfare system for the last 30 
or 40 years is somehow a great contribution to our country obviously 
ignores the atrocities that have been done under this so-called welfare 
system.
  The system that we call welfare is nothing short of subsidized 
misery. In fact, if you or I would
 treat our children in the manner that welfare treats children, it 
would not only by immoral, it would be illegal.

  Mr. Speaker, I will give you one example. If I gave my teenage 
daughter a check and told her to go live by herself in her own 
apartment, I would not only be abandoning my child, I would be actually 
committing child abuse by definition in the State of California and 
most States in this Union. I, as a parent, am not allowed to take a 
minor child and send him or her off to live by themselves. But, Mr. 
Speaker, that is what our welfare system has done for over 40 years.
  It is time that we rethink our well-intentioned but misguided concept 
here, that we have actually taken children and sent them off on their 
own under the guise that we have committed some great privilege and 
helped this individual.
  We have actually punished people who have tried to work their way out 
of welfare for decades in this country. If you were on welfare and you 
got a part-time job, what did Uncle Sam say to you? They said, ``For 
every dollar you earn in part-time, we will take a dollar away from you 
in benefits.'' Then we wonder why people do not work their way out of 
welfare.
  Mr. Speaker, I just would like to point out that the best welfare in 
society is a job, and we will work on that. I come from the county that 
started workfare in 1978, and it was called cruel. It was called 
heartless. It was called right wing radicalism. But as somebody who 
grew up in the neighborhood and operated the system, it was the most 
humane proposal we ever had, and it is time we bring dignity back.
  Mr. Speaker, I will tell you as somebody who administered the 
programs, you take off the Federal strings, you stop telling us how to 
run the system, and the people at the State and local level will 
provide the services that the so-called people who claim to be liberals 
always say ought to be provided.
  We are going to give free lunches to our children. We are just not 
going to give it to the Federal bureaucrats.

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