[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 25 (Monday, March 3, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E357-E358]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   OFF WELFARE: THE MENTAL MIGRATION

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, March 3, 1997

  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, to all colleagues concerned about welfare, 
I commend to you the February 14, 1997, article by Washington Post 
writer William Raspberry. He points out that welfare will not change, 
in fact, cannot change unless there is a spiritual and mental dimension 
to any assistance provided to the recipient.
  Raspberry quotes Robert Woodson, Sr., head of the National Center for 
Neighborhood Enterprise,

       What we need is to establish a new migratory pattern . . . 
     The people who went from rural Mississippi to Detroit did so 
     because they kept getting positive feedback from those who'd 
     already made the trip. The photographs, the sophistication, 
     the Cadillacs rented for trips back home--all these produced 
     a culture of expectation. People looked and said, ``Hey, he's 
     no smarter than I am. I could do it, too.''
  Woodson and Raspberry are not talking about a geographic migration 
for those on welfare, but a mental one--from one attitude to another. 
This article demonstrates that the responsibility lies not merely with 
the welfare recipients, but with all of us. We must all be prepared to 
spread the news when welfare reform works; we must share the success 
stories, to encourage those who are still hesitant and unsure of 
themselves.
  I enter Mr. Raspberry's column into the Congressional Record.

               [From the Washington Post, Feb. 14, 1997]

                   Off Welfare: The Mental Migration

                         (By William Raspberry)

       Years ago, somebody figured it out. Trying to make it on a 
     tiny family farm is desperate work; share-cropping is worse, 
     and there's not much employment to be had in the nearby 
     towns. But I've heard (from relatives, friends or news 
     reports) that there are good union jobs to be had in the 
     steel industry. I think I'll save up bus fare, ask my cousin 
     to put me up for a while, and head to Pittsburgh.
       That calculus, multiplied thousands of times, produced a 
     South-to-North, farm-to-city migration that continued even 
     after the decline both of unions and of the steel industry 
     took away much of the logic.
       It frequently happens that way. Decisions reached with some 
     deliberation by a few become cultural patterns for the many, 
     building habits that survive even after the reasons for them 
     have been forgotten.
       It will almost certainly happen that way with welfare 
     reform. It may be inappropriate to compare long-term welfare 
     recipients with refugees from the tenant farms. But they do 
     have in common that they availed

[[Page E358]]

     themselves of the best options they were able to perceive--
     and that the choices of some became habits for others.
       The logic of welfare reform--welfare repeal, some call it--
     is that the best way to force better choices is to reduce the 
     number of bad options. If it becomes a matter of work or 
     starve, the reasoning goes, everybody will work.
       But for many long-term recipients, non-work has been more 
     the product of habit than of calculation. Thousands of 
     people, I'm convinced, are afraid of work, in the sense that 
     they doubt their ability to survive in a world that demands 
     skills and attitudes they may not possess. They may talk of 
     being unwilling to work for the ``chump change'' of entry-
     level work, but it may be the demands of the workplace and 
     not the low pay that frightens them.
       What can be done?
       ``What we need is to establish a new migratory pattern,'' 
     Robert L. Woodson Sr. said when I put the question to him. 
     ``The people who went from rural Mississippi to Detroit did 
     so because they keep getting positive feedback from those 
     who'd already made the trip. The photographs, the 
     sophistication, the Cadillacs rented for trips back home--all 
     these produced a culture of expectation. People looked and 
     said, `Hey, he's no smarter than I am. I could do it, 
     too.' ''
       Actually, says Woodson, president of the National Center 
     for Neighborhood Enterprise, the necessary migration has been 
     underway for sometime--not from one place to another but from 
     one attitude to another. ``Five women who might have grown 
     fat and indolent in public housing started a tentative 
     migration toward tenant management, responsible behavior and 
     college for their children, sparking an important national 
     movement. Thousands of others have quietly decided to leave 
     the life of dependency and take a tentative step into the 
     world of work.''
       Unfortunately, the media and the policy establishment tend 
     to focus on those who don't join the migration rather than on 
     those who do. As a result, the feedback isn't there. Many 
     poor people don't know that they could start at the bottom 
     and gradually work their way up, and the rest of us see only 
     laziness, not doubt or fear.
       Woodson thinks we should take advantage of the two-years-
     and-out provision of welfare reform to help present welfare 
     recipients overcome their fears. How? By using as a resource 
     those friends and neighbors who've already begun the 
     migration away from dependency. ``We need to look to people 
     in those same neighborhoods who've made the move, whose 
     children are not dropping out of school or dealing dope or 
     getting in trouble, to show the others what is possible. We 
     need to tell them maybe they could quit their job at the 
     phone company or as a hotel maid and work full-time helping 
     their peers find their way out. It would be well worth 
     whatever we had to pay them.''
       Gradually, the reasoned behavior of the few could become 
     patterns for the many, and most would be far better off than 
     before.
       But not all. It is altogether predictable that some will go 
     on making behavioral choices as though the welfare safety net 
     is still in place long after it has been taken down and 
     quietly packed away. They and their children will suffer, at 
     least until the new habits take hold. What should we do about 
     them in the meantime?
       Woodson doesn't know. He only knows that it makes more 
     sense to build public policy on the vast majority than on the 
     intractable few.

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