[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 205 (Wednesday, December 20, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H15273-H15274]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    LET US NOT MAKE THE POOR THE SCAPEGOATS IN BALANCING THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Poshard] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POSHARD. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to come 
to the floor in this special order here. And let me say before I begin 
any of my remarks that I would consider myself to be a fairly moderate 
to conservative member of my caucus, as a Democrat.
  Mr. Speaker, I have been reading the welfare reform conference report 
this afternoon, and I wanted to just make a few remarks on it, because 
I have some concerns about it, frankly, and I wanted to express those 
concerns to the body.
  I favor welfare reform. I know that we have to do certain things to 
make sure that people exercise their self-responsibility in our society 
and that Government cannot be the keeper of everyone. I was reading 
this afternoon, however, and I could not help but think of a time when 
I was in the State Senate back in Illinois, several years ago, and we 
were going through a proposal then that I believe the Governor had 
initiated to cut back on some of the benefits to some of the neediest 
in our State.
  I remember there was a little lady, a nun in the church, who brought 
a bus load of folks down to Springfield. And they came into our 
committee room, and we were considering, I believe at that time perhaps 
the override of this initiative that was going to cut back funds for 
these folks. These were all folks that lived in a rundown part of 
Chicago. They were ragtag. They did not have good clothes. They did not 
seem to be very clean. Some of them were pretty smelly.
  They came into our room, and the little nun who ran the program had 
some of them come up and testify before our committee about how 
important it was just to have the extra $10 or $12 or $15 a month to 
help them survive.
  We were all sitting there listening to this, and I think pretty moved 
by some of the stories that these folks who lived on skid row were 
telling us. And I remember very specifically there was this one little 
guy that came up to the testimonial table and began to speak to our 
committee. He told us about how difficult it was to get through the 
winter and how he really did not have a place to stay, and he said 
those few extra bucks that we were taking away from them meant a lot 
to him. He said, ``I like to get a pack of cigarettes every now and 
then.''

  The minute he said that, all the air just went out of the committee 
room. We were all just kind of sitting there waiting on somebody to 
validate every prejudice we had in our heart against poor people, and 
he did it for us. He said the wrong thing. I could just feel the 
tension begin to rise again in the 

[[Page H15274]]
room and members of the committee sitting there and saying, yeah, well, 
we told you so. Those welfare cheats. That is all they want the money 
for is so they can buy cigarettes.
  I wrote all that down, I remember specifically, because I thought it 
was such a tragedy. I do not want us to make the same mistake out here 
in our welfare reform package. The poor among us are really important. 
They do not have a lot and they only take up a very small part of our 
budget. If we look at the whole budget, and we consider Medicaid and 
housing and food stamps and family support, and those sorts of things, 
it takes up a very small part of our budget. Yet somehow in this 
country we want to make the poor the scapegoats for all the problems 
that we are having here with respect to balancing our budget. Let us 
not do that, please.
  I recall a very important scripture where it said in the end time we 
will all come before the judgment and the Lord will say, ``Enter my 
good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in a few things; I am 
going to make you master over many.'' And we will say, ``Well, when did 
I do that?'' And it says that He will say, ``Well, when you did it unto 
the least of these, My brother, you did it unto Me. When I was hungry, 
you gave Me food. When I was without clothes, you clothed Me. When I 
was thirsty, you gave Me drink. When I was in prison, you visited Me.''
  That is what is important, too. We should not, any of us here, just 
because we need to crunch numbers, or because we need to satisfy 
ourselves that the poor are the cause of our troubles, forget that we 
have a responsibility to be our brother's keeper.

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