[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[December 7, 1996]
[Pages 2177-2178]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 2177]]


The President's Radio Address
December 7, 1996

    Good morning. This week I had the honor of lighting both the 
national Christmas tree and the national menorah. Both are symbols of a 
time of year filled with joy, hope, and expectation, a time, too, when 
we reflect on what we've done and what is left to do, a time to honor 
our obligations to family and community.
    Last summer we made a new beginning on one of our Nation's most 
vexing problems, the welfare system. When I signed the historic welfare 
reform law, we set out to honor a moral obligation for our Nation, to 
help many people in our national community to help themselves. This law 
dramatically changes the Nation's welfare system so that no longer will 
it fail our people, trap so many families in a cycle of dependency, but 
instead will now help people to move from welfare to work. It will do so 
by requiring work of every able-bodied person, by protecting children, 
by promoting parental responsibility through tougher child support 
enforcement.
    We've worked a long time to reform welfare. Change was demanded by 
all the American people, especially those on welfare who bore the brunt 
of the system's failure. For decades now, welfare has too often been a 
trap, consigning generation after generation to a cycle of dependency. 
The children of welfare are more likely to drop out of school, to run 
afoul of the law, to become teen parents, to raise their own children on 
welfare. That's a sad legacy we have the power to prevent. And now we 
can.
    I came to office determined to end welfare as we know it, to replace 
welfare checks with paychecks. Even before I signed the welfare reform 
bill, we were working with States to test reform strategies, giving 43 
States waivers from Federal rules to experiment with reforms that 
required work, imposed time limits, and demanded personal 
responsibility. And we were toughening child support enforcement, 
increasing collections by 50 percent over the last 4 years. That's about 
$4 billion.
    We were determined to move millions from welfare to work, and our 
strategy has worked. I am pleased to announce today that there are now 
2.1 million fewer people on welfare than on the day I took the oath of 
office. That is the biggest drop in the welfare rolls in history.
    Some of these reductions have been even more striking. The welfare 
rolls have dropped 41 percent in Wisconsin, 38 percent in Indiana--two 
States where we granted landmark waivers to launch welfare reform 
experiments.
    Throughout the country we're working to make responsibility a way of 
life, not an option. That means millions of people are on their way to 
building lives with the structure, purpose, meaning, and dignity that 
work gives. And that is something to celebrate.
    But this is just the beginning of welfare reform. We had a choice: 
We could have gone on as we had with a system that was failing, or start 
anew to create a system that could give everyone who's able-bodied a 
chance to work and a chance to be independent. We chose the right way: 
first, working over the last 4 years with the States to reform their own 
systems, then passing a new welfare reform law requiring even more 
change in every State and every community.
    But there is still much to do, and it now falls to all of us to make 
sure this reform works. The next step is for the States to implement the 
new law by tailoring a reform plan that works for their communities. As 
required by the law, we have already certified new welfare reform plans 
for 14 States. Today I'm pleased to announce we're certifying welfare 
for four more States: California, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Alabama. 
All their plans will require and reward work, impose time limits, 
increase child care payments, and demand personal responsibility. And 
across the board, as we give welfare funds back to the States, we will 
protect the guarantees of health care, nutrition, and child care, all of 
which are critical to helping families move from welfare to work. And 
we'll continue to crack down on child support enforcement.
    Welfare as we knew it was a bad deal for everyone. We're determined 
to create a better deal. We want to say to every American, work pays. We 
raised the minimum wage; we expanded the earned-income tax credit to 
allow the working poor to keep more of what they

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earn. Now we have to create a million jobs for people on welfare by 
giving businesses incentives to hire people off welfare and enlisting 
the private sector in a national effort to bring all Americans into the 
economic mainstream. We have to have help from the private sector.
    Together we can make the permanent under class a thing of the past. 
But we have a moral obligation to do that through welfare reform, 
working together in our communities, our businesses, our churches, and 
our schools. Every organization which employs people should consider 
hiring someone off welfare, and every State ought to give those 
organizations the incentives to do so, so that we can help families 
reclaim the right to know they can take care of themselves and their own 
obligations.
    Our future does not have to be one with so many people living 
trapped lives. The door has now been opened to a new era of freedom and 
independence. And now it's up to us, to all of us, to help all the 
people who need it through that door, one family at a time.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 5:25 p.m. on December 6 in the 
Roosevelt Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on 
December 7.