[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 4, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E771]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


       SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE EXPLAINS REPUBLICAN WELFARE REFORM

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                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, April 4, 1995
  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, the San Francisco Chronicle has done a 
superb job cutting through the deceptive rhetoric of the majority in 
Congress to reveal the real reason behind welfare reform, Republican 
style: massive tax cuts for the rich paid for by cutting benefits to 
the millions of poor, elderly, disabled, and legal aliens of our 
country. As the editors so aptly point out, simply cutting benefits to 
our most vulnerable citizens will do absolutely nothing to solve the 
most difficult problems facing them and our society as a whole.
  Meaningful welfare reform must replace dependency with independence 
while maintaining the safety net for those truly in need. Although real 
reform will not be simple and it will not be cheap, the alternative--
cutting off our most needy citizens--is the epitome of short-
sightedness. Mr. Speaker, I commend your attention and the attention of 
my colleagues to this excellent and timely editorial, and I ask that it 
be placed in the Record.
            [From the San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 3, 1995]

                   Welfare on the Cheap Is Not Reform

       Any hope that the Senate might salvage some glimmer of 
     actual ``reform'' from the House-passed welfare bill largely 
     vanished last week when Senate Finance Committee chairman Bob 
     Packwood, R-Ore.--who will draft the Senate version--
     indicated he would go along with the House in ending the 
     federal entitlement nature of most welfare programs and 
     turning them into block grants to the states.
       That basic approach has everything to do with cutting 
     spending for the poor in order to heap tax cuts on the rich--
     and virtually nothing to do with welfare reform.
       As Senator John Chafee, R-R.I., noted last week: ``Instead 
     of focusing on employability * * * out-of-wedlock births and 
     * * * intergenerational welfare dependency, the focus (of the 
     House bill) seems to be entirely on how to save money.* * *''
       That, in fact, is the basic flaw in the Republican 
     approach: the contradiction between saving money and 
     reforming welfare. Real welfare reform, the kind that ends 
     dependency and self-defeating behavior by putting people to 
     work, costs money, it doesn't save it. It requires, at a 
     minimum, paying for job training, child care and job 
     creation--none of which are adequately provided today.
       The original GOP contract spoke of spending $10 billion on 
     jobs programs. The House-passed bill offers nothing--simply 
     the requirement that welfare recipients must work after two 
     years, whether there are any jobs or not, or lose benefits.
       Trying to do welfare on the cheap will result only in a 
     system even less effective and more wasteful than the present 
     one. It is not simply foolish, but mean-spirited, for it 
     arises not from any desire to improve an imperfect system, 
     but from the barely disguised motive of trying to pay for 
     $190 billion worth of middle- and upper-class tax cuts at the 
     expense of the weakest, most disenfranchised members of 
     society: poor women and children, who are the major 
     beneficiaries of welfare, and legal resident aliens, who have 
     paid taxes and played by all the rules but can't vote.
       What would real welfare reform look like? It might well 
     include the GOP demand to turn programs over to the states, 
     as President Clinton has also urged, so that flexibility and 
     experimentation might flourish free of burdensome federal 
     mandates. It would also include more money, not less, for 
     innovative jobs programs.
       But the Republican block grant approach simply replaces 
     liberal federal mandates with conservative ones, and it 
     further constricts the states by reducing overall projected 
     spending by some $65 billion over five years in order to pay 
     for tax breaks.
       As the Economist magazine observed last week, the 
     Republicans are passing up a chance ``to do welfare reform in 
     a way that is right rather than merely right wing.'' If the 
     Senate goes along, the only hope for real welfare reform will 
     be the veto pen.
     

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