[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 177 (Thursday, November 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H12069-H12070]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      THE TERRIBLE RESULTS OF REPUBLICANS' WELFARE REFORM PACKAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, today 
the Executive Office of the President, the Office of Management and 
Budget, released a report describing the impacts of both the House-
passed welfare bill and the Senate-passed welfare bill and, most 
importantly, its impact upon the children of this Nation. This report 
notes that those two pieces of legislation can have a very severe 

[[Page H 12070]]
and substantial impact on those children because this legislation 
threatens to take children who are not now living in poverty and put 
them into poverty by virtue of the withdrawal of resources that are 
available to those children in those families, and that we ought not 
allow to happen.
  The report also points out that we have seen the number of people, 
just recently, who are living in poverty in this Nation decline, that 
in 1994 there were 1.2 million fewer poor people living in poverty than 
in 1993. We also see that the changes that this Congress and the 
administration made on the earned income tax credit for working 
families where we provide some subsidy to low wages in those families 
to keep people in the work force as opposed to the welfare rolls, that 
that has also reduced the number of families that go to work every day 
but simply work at wages that are insufficient to keep their family out 
of poverty.

  So that is the good news. That is the good news of what this 
administration has done and changes that Congress has made.
  But now the report tells us that, if we were to enact the Senate 
welfare bill, that we could expect as many as 1.2 million new children, 
who are currently not in poverty, to be placed in poverty, and God 
forbid if we were to enact the House-passed welfare bill, we could see 
as many as 2.1 or 2.3 million children who are not now in poverty being 
placed in poverty.
  Now to understand what this means, Mr. Speaker, if you read the 
recommendations of this report from the administration, it becomes very 
clear that within these recommendations we can have historic and 
dramatic welfare reform that conforms with what our constituents want 
to see happen, what people on welfare want to see happen, and what we 
want to see happen, and that is that we put in place a comprehensive 
and concerted plan to move people from the welfare rolls to the 
payroll, that people are required to go to work when they have the 
skills and the talent to do so, and we were willing to help people gain 
those skills and that talent to move them off of the welfare roll.
  We can do all of that and not hurt the 1 or 2 million children that 
we see will be hurt if the Republican-passed bills are passed, and that 
currently seems to be the intent of the conferees who are meeting on 
this matter.
  If in fact we do that after receiving this report, we must understand 
that we are now knowingly, knowingly selecting policy options to place 
children in poverty that are not now in poverty. That decision reaches 
a moral dimension, and we ought not, those of us who are fortunate 
enough to be elected to positions of public policy, who have the trust 
of our constituents and the trust of this Nation, should not be 
selecting policy options that knowingly put children into poverty that 
are not in poverty today.
  This is not a contest between the status quo because the status quo 
with respect to welfare is unacceptable. The President has made it 
clear that it is unacceptable to him, the Republicans have made it 
clear that it is unacceptable to them, and the Democrats have made it 
clear that it is unacceptable to us. This is about whether or not we 
design policies to put families to work, to make sure that the day care 
they need is in place, their children will be taken care of and they 
can move off of the welfare rolls, as this Nation expects those 
individuals to do. But all of that is threatened by the passage of 
either the Senate or the House bill and its infliction of terrible, 
terrible results on the children of this Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, those bills should not be passed.

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