[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 117 (Friday, August 2, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S9639]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE QUALITY OF MERCY

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask that an excellent article about 
welfare, ``The Quality of Mercy'', by James McQueeny, be printed in the 
Record.
  Mr. President, I had the good fortunate of benefiting from Jim 
McQueeny's competence and compassion when he served as my press 
secretary several years ago. These same qualities are evident in his 
article, which is an eloquent statement about what it means to be on 
welfare, and what the welfare reform bill will mean for real people.
  I urge all my colleagues to read the article.
  The article follows:

                [From the New Jersey Monthly, July 1995]

  The Quality of Mercy--Many New Jerseyans Believe That Welfare Is a 
Waste. One Man--Now a Successful Executive--Who's Lived on It Disagrees

                          (By James McQueeny)

       I'm not a member of any obvious minority group (being the 
     son of an Irish immigrant no longer counts), although these 
     days I might qualify as out of the mainstream because I am a 
     Democrat. My views on welfare seem to place me even more 
     squarely in the minority. And I am very concerned about what 
     we as a society are saying and doing about that issue.
       We in New Jersey, the second richest state in the nation, 
     are in the best position possible to do something about 
     poverty and welfare reform, yet we're going about it with the 
     worst possible attitude. The very success of New Jersey's 
     post-war suburbanization has fueled what some pollsters call 
     the Drawbridge Mentality--the mindset of people who find 
     their castle and pull up the drawbridge on everybody and 
     everything else. And who in suburbia actually lives near 
     someone in poverty or on welfare? C'mon, I mean really knows 
     them. By face. By name.
       I do. I was one of them. So I've always been aware of 
     poverty slights, and they're on the increase. I've cringed at 
     a ``progressive'' suggestion by a prominent New Jersey 
     business leader who told me he wants to help the poor ``get 
     off their asses.'' As if these people wake up every morning 
     looking for ways to make themselves poorer. Or the Democratic 
     politician who was trying to rationalize reforming welfare by 
     not extending benefits to additional children of welfare 
     mothers. As if the child had a choice of mother and 
     neighborhood.
       As someone who has lived at the extreme ends of the 
     economic spectrum in New Jersey, I know firsthand the 
     frightening reality of life in poverty. I grew up on welfare, 
     in a well-off town in Bergen County, one of the wealthiest 
     counties in the state. I worked my way up through the ranks 
     of New Jersey's largest newspaper, covering every county and 
     the statehouse in Trenton, and eventually I became the 
     paper's Washington bureau chief. Later, I was a television 
     reporter for New Jersey Network, and I was the spokesman for 
     one of our United States senators. I am now the president and 
     an owner of a multimillion dollar company.
       I point this out only to emphasize that I cobbled together 
     a professional life after starting out poor--and on welfare--
     in New Jersey. And now, a day hardly goes by without a 
     personal incident or a public headline reminding me how we're 
     making it harder in New Jersey for the disadvantaged to 
     follow a similar path of opportunity. And that upsets me.
       Several months ago, I was at Menlo Park Mall conducting 
     voter interviews with a camera team for a weekly political 
     commentary I do for NJN. Person after person in these opulent 
     surroundings railed against big government. The phrase 
     ``welfare cheats'' was usually the caboose on their long 
     trains of lament, mostly about the economy.
       As I stood before them, I reverted to a habit I've had 
     since poverty. I looked at the shoes of the people I was 
     talking to. Why? Probably because my four brothers and I 
     thought good shoes were the province of ``rich people.'' Our 
     ``school shoes'' were worn only to school and Mass, and they 
     had to last until they literally disintegrated on our feet. I 
     can still recall going into town to a business that had an 
     industrial staple gun, so I could either secure the flapping 
     soles or repatch the holes with wads of oilcloth stapled from 
     the inside so no one would notice.
       Instinctively, my gaze fell upon the shoes of the people 
     complaining about things being so bad economically in New 
     Jersey. Without exception, they were wearing designer shoes--
     those kinds of sneakers that salespeople bring to you so 
     delicately you'd think they were explosives, or those spiffy 
     Rockport walking shoes. I was so amazed by those walking 
     shoes that I was compelled to go into a shoe store and price 
     them. One hundred and twenty dollars! On sale!
       With those kinds of shoes on their feet, they're feeling 
     that much anger? I thought. And about the economy? They're 
     not complaining about what they don't have. They're 
     complaining that they don't have enough. Has poverty become 
     so trivialized that the New Downtrodden are those who can't 
     afford Rockports?
       Unfortunately, it looks like it. I only wish that some of 
     these people could have learned the lessons of poverty the 
     way I did--through experience. Like the time I couldn't tell 
     my teacher I didn't have $1.50 for a science magazine 
     subscription because I'd be revealing that I was on welfare 
     in a rich town. Instead, I always said I forgot the money. He 
     marked me up as a wise-guy deportment case, which helped 
     drive my grades down.
       Some teachers ridiculed my scraggly shoes in front of 
     classmates, unthinkingly viewing them as an issue of 
     cleanliness rather than pennilessness.
       On one free field trip (I stayed behind in study hall for 
     the paid ones), I borrowed a camera from a classmate on the 
     bus to take a picture of some mundane highway bridge that 
     crossed the Passaic River, about ten miles from home. They 
     all had a riotous laugh when they found out I'd never been 
     this far from home because we never had a car.
       And, yes, we were forced to ``cheat'' on welfare, too. The 
     ``welfare lady'' visited the house at pre-arranged times to 
     make sure we weren't buying things that would indicate 
     alternative incomes of some kind. That would be cheating the 
     taxpayer. I had to hide any evidence of the prosperity I was 
     enjoying form my paper route--even the household essentials 
     we bought with the money I earned. My brothers' bikes, bought 
     second-hand, had to be hidden before the visits.
       What got us into this predicament? My father lost his job. 
     Does it become a more acceptable welfare story when I say it 
     was because he contracted terminal lung cancer and took six 
     years to die? As opposed to being a victim of economic 
     cancer?
       I won't insult victims of poverty or families on welfare by 
     fully equating my time on welfare, or being poor and white in 
     suburbia in the sixties, with the problems they are facing 
     now. The problems now are worse, meaner. And bleaker.
       From my experience, and in discussions with people who 
     lived or live in similar circumstances, there is one profound 
     misunderstanding that policymakers and the public have about 
     poverty: You do not choose it; by and large, it chooses you.
       The Democratic party meant to do well when it stitched 
     together the welfare safety net during the Depression. And 
     welfare worked well enough for a while. But as time passed, 
     we didn't have the political common sense to stop sewing when 
     it wasn't working well enough. We do need to come up with 
     something else.
       But the latest plan being bandied about, the Contract With 
     America welfare-reform proposal, really boils down to turning 
     the program back to the states with guidelines about cutting 
     off benefits to the needy tomorrow, while declaring victory 
     today. The reason that this reform plan won't work is that 
     you can cut spending all you want, but the same mothers and 
     children will have the same food and sheltering needs at 
     roughly the same cost come the end of the day--no matter how 
     you cook the books or serve the baloney. And, yes, there will 
     always be some lumpen layabouts or drug-fried fools who will 
     rip off the system for dollars at the margins, get all the 
     headlines, and jump-start another sorry cycle of retribution 
     against the truly poor and needy.
       Part of the problem is that Congress, and state 
     legislatures, are overstocked with affluent lawyers, 
     professionals, and full-time politicians who are more than 
     able and willing to impart their professional experiences on 
     tort reform, health care, or the next day's news cycle. I 
     know it's not fair, but I've seen what these politicians 
     drive to work and leave in the parking lots outside the 
     Congress and the state capital. Nobody's holding the mufflers 
     of those cars together with hanger wire, I can assure you.
       All of this seems so fresh, so important to me, because I 
     know that welfare made it possible for me to go as far as I 
     have. I still have my family's welfare application, signed by 
     both my parents, for my sons to see. I tell them to remember 
     it's nothing to be ashamed about. To the contrary, it was a 
     safety net that scooped up seven people from our family, and 
     the investment in us let us re-invest our lives--and our 
     taxes--in America.
       The shame would come from not extending our hands to 
     someone else. But the real shame is that that could become a 
     minority view in a state like New Jersey.

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