[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 92 (Thursday, June 20, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1137]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         CLINTON WELFARE REFORM

                                 ______


                            HON. RON PACKARD

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 20, 1996

  Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Speaker, it was not a month ago that the President 
praised the Wisconsin welfare reform plan. Once he got the headlines he 
wanted, the backpeddle began. The Clinton administration's wavering on 
Wisconsin's plan is just another in a long history of broken promises 
on welfare reform.
  Throughout 1992, candidate Clinton talked time and again about the 
need for welfare reform. It has been almost 4 years and his only action 
on welfare reform has been to veto the reform, not once, but twice. In 
February of this year, the President supported a bipartisan welfare 
reform plan unanimously approved by the Nation's 50 Governors--
Republican and Democrat alike. Within a month Secretary Shalala said 
the President would veto the plan.
  It is clear the President does not mean what he says. In spite of all 
of his talk, he is wed to the status quo. By contrast, my Republican 
colleagues and I are committed to ending welfare as we know it. 
Congressional Republicans have proposed and passed genuine welfare 
reform that moves people off of the welfare rolls and onto payrolls.
  If we are to have real welfare reform, we must take power out of the 
hands of Washington bureaucrats and give it back to the people and the 
States. Not many people, outside of the White House, believe that the 
Washington welfare bureaucracy--which has presided over the past 30 
years of failure--knows more about welfare reform than the States who 
have proven track records. It is high time the President stopped 
talking out of both sides of his mouth and began welfare reform in 
earnest.

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