[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 112 (Friday, July 26, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H8587-H8588]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  WHO REALLY SPEAKS FOR THE CHILDREN?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington [Mr. White] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WHITE. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to spend 
just a few minutes on a subject that is very important to me that is 
the subject of children.
  I have four children and, as luck would have it, I have one of them 
here on the floor with me today. My 10-year-old daughter Emily is 
visiting Washington, DC, with me this week, and she has a 12-year-old 
sister, a 7-year-old sister and a 4-year-old brother, in our household 
children are very important. I hope they are very important to every 
Member of this body because just about everything we do here will have 
an impact on our country's children.
  Mr. Speaker, I am new to this body. I have been here only a year and 
a half, but I have noticed there is a significant difference between 
our two parties when we talk about children.
  The Democrats tend to talk about Government programs, Government 
spending, and Government bureaucrats, and I recognize that is an 
approach that they have taken. They think that is what it takes to 
raise a child, and I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, I disagree.

  We have spent billions and billions and billions of dollars over the 
last 30 years on Government run welfare, and our problems have only 
gotten worse. I think it is time for Republicans and Democrats to call 
for a new approach or, Mr. Speaker, maybe it is a very old approach. 
This approach is called responsible parents. That is what it takes to 
raise a child in America today, responsible parents.
  We should not be asking ourselves what should the Government do for 
children. What we should be asking is how can we help parents do more 
for their children? What children need is not more Government spending, 
it is compassion. It is help from their parents. That is something the 
Government cannot provide.
  When we talk about children, Republicans begin with three principles: 
First, that the moral health of our Nation is at least as important as 
the economic health or the military health of our country. The fact is 
you cannot raise children in the proper environment when 12-year-olds 
are having babies, 15-year-olds are killing each other, 17-year-olds 
are dying of AIDS and 18-year-olds are graduating with diplomas that 
they cannot read. If we are going to take care of our children, we have 
to restore the moral health of our country.
  Second, it is results, not rhetoric, that count. Anyone can sound 
compassionate. Anyone can say what people want to hear. But we have got 
to go out there and do things that will actually help our children.
  Third, we really have to look ourselves in the mirror and admit to 
ourselves and to the American people that the system we have in place 
right now is a failure. We have spent billions and billions of dollars 
over the past 30 years on a system that has not worked, and it is time 
to try something new.
  Mr. Speaker, 30 years ago the Government started out with the best 
intentions but instead of solving the problem the Government created a 
welfare trap in this country. We have trapped a generation of Americans 
on Government assistance. We have deprived them of hope, of 
opportunity, and in many cases we have destroyed the lives of many 
precious children.
  Take a look at what is happening in our cities. You will see a 
generation that is fed on food stamps, but starved on nurturing and 
hope and parental care. You will see second graders who do not know 
their ABC's, fourth graders who cannot add or subtract. You will see 
sixth graders who do not know the number of inches in a foot because 
they have never seen a ruler.

  Yet every year, as we have done for the past 30 years, the Government 
spends more money on programs because it thinks that is the 
compassionate way to help people. Instead of helping people, Government 
in expanding the welfare trap from one community to another, from one 
child to another, from one generation to another. The welfare trap and 
Government spending makes us think we have done

[[Page H8588]]

something, makes us feel good about ourselves, when really we have not 
even begun to solve the problem.
  As I say, the Government bureaucracy is well-intentioned, but what 
Government has failed to understand is that raising more taxes to hire 
more bureaucrats to expand a welfare system that does not work is only 
going to make matters worse. We have got to try a different approach.
  The fact is welfare is not the only problem that is affecting our 
children. We recently passed a welfare reform bill in this House that 
takes a new approach and maybe that will have some positive affects. We 
need a new approach because at the start of this decade we had the most 
murders, the worst schools, the most abortions, the highest infant 
mortality rate, the most illegitimacy, the most one-parent families, 
the most children in jail, and the most children on Government aid in 
the world.
  We are first only in the numbers of lawyers and lawsuits. That is the 
situation that has to change. The fact is a government-based policy to 
help children just does not work. It tends to destroy them, as we have 
seen over the past 30 years. It does not keep families together. It 
tends to drive them apart and instead of turning our cities into 
shining cities on the hill, it has made them into war zones where no 
one dares to go out at night and sometimes they do not dare to go out 
in the daytime as well.
  So let me describe two competing visions of how we take care of our 
children in this country. There is the Government-based vision that we 
have talked about, but there is also a family based vision where 
parents like me, and like all of us who have children, are empowered to 
make decisions, where communities can decide for themselves how to 
fight crime and drugs and educate their children and where local school 
officials are given the ability to develop a curriculum that fits the 
needs of their students. That is the sort of approach we need to take.

  Too often politicians use children as props. We should use them 
instead as a reminder that we have got a responsibility to the next 
generation. We need to help them with compassion and nurturing, not 
with Government handouts.
  Too often politicians simply talk the talk because that is the easy 
way. It is easy to sound compassionate. But we need to work to reform 
the system that currently has failed our children, and I think that 
work begins with reforming welfare.
  Let me state this clearly so there is no confusion. We have spent $5 
trillion since the midsixties on Government run welfare programs and 
yet we have more poverty, more crime, more drug addiction, more broken 
families, and more immoral behavior today than we had at that time. The 
Government system is broken. It does not work. It needs to be shut 
down, period.
  But we have some alternatives. We have some things that might 
actually work, and let me give a couple of examples. Why does Habitat 
for Humanity work? It works because it requires recipients to do their 
own work, to learn the lessons themselves. Why does Earning for 
Learning work? It works because it pays young children to read. It 
educates many more than the Department of Education can ever do.
  Let me say, Mr. Speaker, in closing, our children are the future of 
our country. They are something we have to take very, very seriously. 
It is not enough to say that we care and not do the work to fix the 
system so it really does take care of our children.

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