[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 118 (Thursday, July 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10334-S10335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      RESTORE HOPE AND OPPORTUNITY

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, it is true that there is a broad 
consensus that people understand what we have attempted to do with our 
welfare system has been a failure. If you want to see what our current 
Washington-based, one-size-fits-all welfare program has done, to see 
how the perverse incentives of the welfare system have failed, I guess 
you could go just a couple blocks from here. There you can see a 
generation raised by welfare and fed through food stamps, but literally 
starved of nurture and hope. You will meet young teens in their third 
pregnancy. You will meet children who not only do not have a father, 
but they do not know any other child with a father. These are tragedies 
of the current system, and these are the realities against which reform 
must properly be judged.
  There has been a great deal of reporting recently on divisions in our 
discussion on welfare. I would like to make something as clear as I 
possibly can. While it may have taken us some time to reconcile our 
differences in terms of the strategy that we have, we have never 
forgotten the horror of our current system, we have never disagreed on 
our fundamental values, and we have never wavered from our central 
commitment, and that is to end the system of welfare we have now, to 
strengthen States and communities, to restore hope and opportunity to 
the millions of Americans for whom such words now are tragically words 
without definition or words without meaning.
  I might add that it is important for us to understand that as well 
meaning as we might be in Washington in seeking to find a single 
solution to all of the problems that relate to the needs of people that 
would move them from dependence to independence, it would be 
inappropriate for us to try and find 

[[Page S10335]]
a solution because there are lots of solutions that are going to be 
necessary, and no one garment will fit all children and no one vehicle 
will carry all loads and no single system imposed from Washington on 
this great Nation will be productive in moving people from the web of 
dependency to the opportunity of independence.
  We really need for the creative capacity of the States, the 
innovation and the energy of people who are working to develop their 
own systems and the commitment that that investment in their own 
systems brings, to be allowed in a new system which would give States 
the opportunity through block grants to develop the strategies which 
will elicit the response among the citizens of the communities that 
those States represent.
  So as we work together, and I am pleased to have had the opportunity 
to work with so many people in this respect, through vigorous 
discussions and the discussions I have had have been no more vigorous 
with anyone than those discussions which I have had with the 
distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania who inhabits the chair at this 
moment. But it is that kind of discussion, it is that kind of exchange, 
it is that kind of a collusion of ideas that provides the opportunity 
for the truth to emerge and for the real progress to be made.
  In the weeks ahead as we debate welfare, it is my hope that this 
debate will serve as a trial. It should be a trial that will indict the 
abuses, the horrors, the lies of our current Washington-knows-best, 
one-size-fits-all perverse, incentive-laden system of welfare. It is my 
intention in the weeks ahead to try and ensure that an understanding of 
the current system happens so that we can avoid making the mistakes of 
the past over again. Someone much wiser than I has said appropriately 
that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it. Let us not be 
destined to repeat the horror of our welfare system.
  Today, I just want to begin by talking about an incident that 
probably all of us remember, because we cannot forget. In February of 
1994 in the process of a routine drug raid in Chicago, police stumbled 
upon 19 young children, some handicapped, living on dirty mattresses in 
an unspeakably filthy six-bedroom apartment infested with roaches and 
soiled with animal dirt.
  The Chicago Tribune reported it this way:

       The children of [six] mothers from [six] fractured families 
     * * * [were found] vacantly watching TV * * * [and] fighting 
     over the remains of a chicken bone that the family dog had 
     eaten.

  President Clinton said that the despair and wasted human potential 
within that one Chicago apartment was not merely a social problem from 
far off places like Calcutta, India, but the heart of a very domestic 
problem occurring in urban centers all around America.
  Among the adults that lived in that apartment, more than $65,000--
more than $65,000--per year was received annually in public assistance, 
aid that took the form of cash payments, food stamps, medical care. 
Somehow, some way that money was not having its intended effect.
  A system designed with the best intentions, unfortunately is leading 
to the destination of the road paved with best intentions; a system 
designed with the best intentions is eliciting and encouraging the 
worst behavior; a system which built change of dependency rather than 
breaking shackles.
  In that house, there were no fathers to be found, no hope to be found 
for anyone. This is a tragedy that happens all across America, and it 
is a tragedy of our current system.
  So as I conclude, let me just say that as we consider welfare reform, 
let the true measure of our reform never be the dollars that we might 
save, or the bureaucracy that is cut, or the programs that are reduced. 
But let our measure of reform be found in the ability to move people 
from hopeless governmental dependence to hopeful economic and personal 
independence, from the grasp of a perverse system of Government 
programs to the embrace of the loving and caring communities and the 
limitless opportunities of America.
  Mr. President, I thank you.
  Mr. INHOFE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

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