    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 6, 1995]
    [Pages 1313-1314]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Letter to Congressional Leaders on Welfare Reform
    September 6, 1995

    Dear Mr. Leader:

        I am glad the Senate has finally come to this important debate on
    welfare reform. The American people have waited a long time for this. We
    owe it to the people who sent us here not to let this opportunity slip
    away by doing the wrong thing or by failing to act at all.

        Over the last two and a half years, my Administration has
    aggressively pursued welfare reform at every turn. We proposed sweeping
    welfare reform legislation to impose time limits and work requirements
    and promote the values of work, responsibility, and family. We have put
    tough child support enforcement at the center of the national welfare
    reform debate: My Administration collected a record level of child
    support in 1993--$9 billion--and I signed a far-reaching Executive Order
    to crack down on federal employees who owe child support.

        We have put the country on the road to ending welfare as we know it,
    by approving welfare reform experiments in a record 34 states. Through
    these experiments, 7 million recipients around the country are now being
    required to work, pay child support, live at home and stay in school,
    sign a personal responsibility contract, or earn a paycheck from a
    business that uses money that was spent on food stamp and welfare
    benefits to subsidize private sector jobs. Today, my Administration is
    granting two more waivers to expand successful state experiments in
    Ohio, which rewards teen mothers who stay in school and sanctions those
    who don't, and in Florida, which requires welfare recipients to go to
    work as a condition of their benefits and provides child care when they
    do.

        I am confident that what we're doing to reform welfare around the
    country is helping to instill the values all Americans share. Now we

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    need to pass a welfare reform bill that ends the current welfare system
    altogether and replaces it with one that puts work, responsibility, and
    family first.

        That is why I strongly support and urge you to pass the welfare
    reform bill sponsored by Senators Daschle, Breaux, and Mikulski that is
    before the Senate today. Instead of maintaining the current broken
    system which undermines our basic values, the Daschle-Breaux-Mikulski
    plan demands responsibility and requires people to work. The Work First
    bill will cut the budget by moving people to work, not by asking states
    to handle more problems with less money and shipping state and local
    taxpayers the bill.

        I support the Work First plan because welfare reform is first and
    foremost about work. We should impose time limits and tough work
    requirements, and make sure that people get the child care they need to
    go to work. We should reward states for putting people to work, not for
    cutting people off. We will only end welfare as we know it if we succeed
    in moving people from welfare to work.

        Welfare reform is also about family. That means the toughest
    possible child support enforcement, because people who bring children
    into this world should take responsibility for them, not just walk away.
    It also means requiring teen mothers to live at home, stay in school,
    and turn their lives around--not punishing children for the mistakes of
    their parents.

        Finally, welfare reform must be about responsibility. States have a
    responsibility to maintain their own efforts to move people from welfare
    to work, so that we can have a race to independence, not a race to the
    bottom. Individuals have a responsibility to work in return for the help
    they receive. The days of something for nothing are over. It is time to
    make welfare a second chance, and responsibility a way of life.

        We have a ways to go in this welfare reform debate, but we have made
    progress. I have always sought to make welfare reform a bipartisan
    issue. The dignity of work, the bond of family, and the virtue of
    responsibility are not Republican values or Democratic values. They are
    American values--and no child in America should ever have to grow up
    without them. We can work toward a welfare reform agreement together, as
    long as we remember the values this debate is really about.

        The attached Statement of Administration Policy spells out my views
    on the pending legislation in further detail.
            Sincerely,

                                                                Bill Clinton

    Note: Identical letters were sent to Bob Dole, Senate majority leader,
    and Thomas A. Daschle, Senate Democratic leader.