[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 73 (Thursday, May 1, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2733-S2734]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Budget Reconciliation
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the Senate has made good progress on
implementing President Trump's agenda. After just 100 days, we have
confirmed his Cabinet. We are now working on a number of Ambassadors,
and we have passed budget resolutions in the House and the Senate. And,
of course, we are now grinding out the reconciliation process to make
sure that the tax cuts that expire at the end of this year do not
expire and we are able to prevent the largest tax increase in American
history--a multitrillion-dollar tax increase were we to be
unsuccessful.
But, as we know, passing the budget is probably the easiest part of
this process which we have just been through, and now the various
committees of jurisdiction have their work cut out for them, both in
the House and the Senate, to meet the targets laid out by the budget.
Perhaps, one of the most difficult parts of this process will be to
identify savings to meet budget targets in order to offset the
necessary costs in this ``one big beautiful bill.'' It is going to be
really complicated, and it is going to be hard, and there are a lot of
moving parts.
But one of the ways we can, I think, make good progress on cutting
down on some of the excess spending that Washington seems to always
fall into is by implementing work requirements for able-bodied adults
without dependents for all means-tested programs.
So means-tested programs--obviously, that refers to the fact that at
certain income levels, people can get access to certain benefits by the
government. Medicaid is one example; food stamps is another; temporary
assistance to needy families--all of these are means-tested.
But over time, the work requirements for able-bodied adults has been
eroded. Now this used to be part of our bipartisan consensus. This goes
back to the Clinton era where there was an agreement between Democrats
and Republicans that government assistance should be conditioned on
work. The philosophy, which I think is a sound philosophy, is that
government programs are here to step in to fill the gap, a safety net,
if you will, when hard times come along. But we don't want any of our
citizens, for a whole variety of reasons, to fall into a trap of long-
term dependency. That is not good for them; that is not good for their
families; it is not good for the communities in which they live; and it
is unfair to taxpayers. Taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize people
who can work and who should work but who don't work.
So conditioning aid on some form of work participation, whether it is
an actual job or a job training program or volunteer service was a way
to keep Americans from falling into this trap.
So it was 1996 when President Clinton and Newt Gingrich, the Speaker
of the House, came together to pass the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. That is a mouthful. It came to be
known more commonly as the Welfare Reform Act of 1996.
This landmark legislation created a program called TANF, or Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families. TANF imposed a 5-year limit on cash
assistance and also implemented work requirements for able-bodied
adults without children.
And the success of this law was beyond expectations. Within 5 years,
welfare caseloads declined by close to 50 percent, the first
significant decline since World War II. At the same time, employment
and earnings among low-income individuals went up dramatically. Their
standard of living improved dramatically. Employment among single
mothers increased from 50 percent to 70 percent within 7 years, while
the number of children living in poverty--this is a big one--the number
of children living in poverty declined by 2.9 percent.
Unfortunately, this era of bipartisan consensus and good policy was
turned upside down by the Obama administration's disastrous decision to
roll back the TANF work requirements by issuing waivers.
The U.S. Government spends $1 trillion on means-tested programs, and
work requirements are a commonsense way to reform these programs and to
save hard-earned tax dollars of American working families that are now
spent on people who can work and should work but don't work.
Recent research from the Foundation for Government Accountability
found that more than 62 percent of able-bodied adults who receive
Medicaid benefits do not work at all. Let me say that again because it
is so shocking: The Foundation for Government Accountability found that
more than 62 percent--almost two-thirds--of able-bodied adults who
receive Medicaid benefits do not work at all.
Implementing work requirements have worked well for TANF, and adding
SNAP or food stamp programs would be a great step forward as well. This
policy alone would save up to $281 billion over the next 10 years.
It was also found in polling that this sort of requirement has been
supported by nearly 75 percent of voters. So this is a successful
requirement, work requirements, something that enjoyed bipartisan
support, and in polling, voters show that 75 percent of voters said
they thought it was a good idea.
But setting aside the budgetary implications, work requirements have
many other positive, downstream effects for American society. As a
nation, labor force participation--that is, those who are either
gainfully employed or actively searching for a job--has been on the
decline among working-age men for decades now. And, of course, COVID
was a huge body blow on the workforce participation rates already.
Between 1960 and 2023, the fraction of working-age men who are out of
the labor force increased from about 3 percent to a whopping 11
percent. And by 2024, this number was increased to 22 percent--it
doubled. This is nearly a 700-percent increase over the past six and a
half decades.
Significant numbers of men are opting out of the labor force, and it
is detrimental to society for a whole host of reasons. And the truth
is, it is detrimental to them because there is dignity that comes with
work, self-respect providing for your family, and your contributing to
your community. Those are intangibles, perhaps, but important in
American society and American culture.
But we also know that many businesses struggle to find workers. The
Wall Street Journal recently highlighted that a common complaint among
employers, particularly in the manufacturing sector, is that they have
many well-paying jobs and they can't find enough workers to fill those
available jobs.
Around half of small business owners in construction and
manufacturing recently reported having job vacancies they could not
fill. Recently, progressive policymakers have decided that widespread
illegal immigration was the solution to these workforce shortages,
opening up our borders.
[[Page S2734]]
Well, we know President Biden--I think unwisely--granted work
authorizations to many of the illegal immigrants that were released
into the interior of the United States, which further incentivized
illegal immigration. That is not the answer.
To make matters worse, President Biden started the Cuban-Haitian-
Nicaraguan-Venezuelan Parole Program, which granted work authorization
for up to 30,000 illegal immigrants each month--from four countries.
None of these programs were authorized by Congress. They were created
by the Biden administration, acting outside the law, and they included
none of the protections for American workers that Congress wrote into
our existing programs.
Thankfully, we have a new President, and President Trump has been
taking action to end these illegal practices by the Biden
administration.
When we think about what a healthy and flourishing society looks
like, it does not include large numbers of prime-age workers sitting on
the sidelines or sitting on the couch at home. Rather, it does include
a fully engaged population, fully engaged in productive activity like
work or training or looking for work.
Opening our borders to criminals and who knows what and granting them
work authorizations while able-bodied adult American men sit on the
sidelines has never been the answer. Yet that seemed to be the answer
that the Biden administration gave us.
I have a better idea, and it is not my original idea. Let's
incentivize able-bodied individuals who are currently not working to
get back in the job market and fill these positions. If they need
training, let's make sure they get the training so they can fill these
good, well-paying jobs so they cannot only get off this cycle of
dependency, they can support themselves and their families. They can
contribute to their communities and contribute to the welfare of our
Nation.
By enhancing the work requirements on means-tested government aid
programs like Medicaid--but not limited to Medicaid--we, as
policymakers, have a much better shot at making our communities
function better and allowing more and more people to pursue and achieve
the American dream. Human beings were not meant to sit idly, not meant
to sit on the couch and play video games all day, not meant to be
dependent on others that do labor productively. We were not meant to
sit and watch while others toiled and to reap the benefits of their
labor.
So as we, the various committees in the Senate and the House, get to
work to hash out the details of President Trump's big, beautiful bill
that will extend these tax cuts, there is a lot more we can and we need
to do. I encourage all of us to use this unique opportunity to do what
happened back as a result of the Clinton-Gingrich agreement and the
Welfare Reform Act of 1996, and that is reinstate reasonable work
requirements for all of our means-tested programs. It will help us deal
with the $37 trillion in debt that we currently have. And as we all
know, we are spending more money on interest on the debt than we are on
defense, an unsustainable situation for more than one reason.
But this policy will help us get our fiscal house in order and will
help us address the societal ills that our country is facing by
encouraging greater workforce participation.
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