    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
    [February 18, 1997]
    [Pages 162-166]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion on Welfare Reform in New York City
    February 18, 1997

        The President. I now know that I came here because after a long
    holiday weekend, I needed a little good preaching to wake up for the
    rest of the week. [Laughter]
        Let me thank you, Dr. Forbes, for welcoming me here, and Dr.
    Washington, for giving me the chance, just before we began, to walk
    through the beautiful sanctuary upstairs which I have heard about and
    known about for many years. The legendary story of Harry Emerson Fosdick
    and John D. Rockefeller even made its way to me many years ago.
        I want to thank Senator Moynihan and Congressman Rangel for being
    here, as well as Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez and Congresswoman Carol
    Maloney; thank you for being here. The members of the panel, thank you
    all. I want to especially say a word of thanks to Secretary of Health
    and Human Services Donna Shalala, who literally just got off an airplane
    this morning from South Africa, where she went with the Vice President,
    and got off one airplane and got on mine and came here. So if she nods
    out during the ceremony--[laughter]--we will forgive her.
        Let me get right to business. I came here because I wanted to know a
    little about what this church is doing and because I wanted to say to
    the people of New York City and New York what is required of us to do
    together under this welfare reform law.
        By way of background, in the last 4 years and before the law was
    passed--before the law was changed, the welfare rolls in America were
    reduced by almost 2.3 million. I received just yesterday an analysis by
    the Council of Economic Advisers--and that's a record, by the way; the
    welfare rolls had never gone down by that much in a 4-year period
    before--the Council of Economic Advisers saying to me that they thought
    about half of the welfare rolls reduction had come because the economy
    had improved. We, after all, had 11\1/2\ million new jobs in the last 4
    years, and no 4-year period had produced that many before. But about 30
    percent of these jobs had materialized--or this movement had
    materialized because of the welfare reform efforts already going on in
    43 States, people in the States making an extra effort to move people
    from welfare to work. And about 20 percent happened for reasons that
    cannot be identified. But among other things, we had a 50 percent
    increase in child support collections over the last 4 years, and
    anything of that magnitude always enables some people to move out of the
    welfare rolls and out of the ranks of poverty.
        Now, that's what happened in the last 4 years. In the next 4 years--
    I won't go through all the details of it, but Secretary Shalala and my
    staff have provided me with an analysis which says that, in essence, the
    welfare roll law now says that after a certain amount of time, everybody
    who's able to work should be in the work force, and therefore welfare
    can't be for a lifetime. And then there are all kinds of rules and
    regulations and requirements. But the bottom line is we have to move
    about a million people from the welfare rolls to the work rolls in the
    next 4 years. That's about the same number of people we moved in the
    last 4 years, because the average welfare family actually has about 2\1/
    2\, 2.7 people in it.
        Now, the problem is, in the last 4 years we had 11\1/2\ million
    jobs. If we can produce 11\1/2\ million jobs in the next 4 years, we'll
    be doing fine. But we have to do it without knowing that for sure. And
    how are we going to do this? That's what I want to talk about today. And
    more importantly, how can we not just move people for 1 month or 2 or 3
    or 4 or 5 or 6 months into a job but how can we help people who have
    been trapped in a culture of dependence and poverty to move to a culture
    of independence, family, and work?

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        I think it is fair to assume that whenever you reduce the welfare
    rolls, the people who are most employable move off first. Therefore, the
    people who are left may be more difficult to employ than the ones who
    have already moved.
        I want to talk about just three or four things that we intend to
    continue to do. Number one, we believe that child support collections
    will continue to increase because we've made significant changes in the
    law to help us do that.
        Number two, we have asked the Congress to pass a bill which would
    give employers who hire people from welfare to work or who hire single
    men off food stamps, who have no income and get food stamps, into the
    work force would get a 50 percent tax credit for a salary of up to
    $10,000. So a maximum tax credit--actual reduction of the tax bill of
    $5,000, which is quite a significant incentive.
        Thirdly, we recommend funds to States and to cities sufficient to
    create about 380,000 jobs in the public sector over the next 4 years.
        Fourthly, I would remind you that the existing law provides for now
    more funds for child care than before, $4 billion, and continuing
    support for health care for people who have public assistance and who
    move into the work force.
        Now, in addition to that, if you look at this pattern, I also want
    to point out that the State has some flexibility right now. The State of
    New York, for example, right now, can offer all or part of a monthly
    welfare check to an employer as a wage and training subsidy if the
    employer will hire someone off welfare. For a single man on food stamps
    but with no welfare check, the State of New York can cash out the food
    stamps and give it to the employer as a wage and training subsidy under
    the new law.
        Secretary Shalala and I will work together to give some States the
    flexibility under the old law, and the results, the preliminary results
    are quite encouraging. The State of Florida has just announced a program
    to try this.
        How are we going to get all these people jobs? Let me give you some
    numbers. This country has 826,000 private sector business employers with
    20 or more employees. A lot of them have a lot more than 20 employees.
    We have 1.1 million nonprofit organizations; many of them are large
    enough to hire someone else. We have 135,000 religious--churches,
    synagogues, mosques, and others--with 200 or more members. Obviously, if
    half that many--50 percent of them--hired one person, we could get
    there. And a lot of the big companies can hire more than one.
        The point I want to make is that this is a manageable problem--if
    you look at the tax credits, if you look at the cash incentives that the
    States can offer, it's a manageable problem. But it will not work unless
    out of this we create what Dr. Forbes talked about at the beginning, in
    this partnership of hope here.
        We have got to create a community-based system, supporting work and
    family, to make welfare a transitional program that is a program of
    support and movement to independence. The way the law is written, we
    have several years to phase in what has to be done, but we've worked out
    the numbers. We think we have to move another million people from the
    welfare rolls into the job market, which would reduce the overall rolls
    by about almost 3 million if we did that, with the children. So that's
    the background. Those are the incentives we can bring to the table. But
    we have to have your help to set up this network.
        Let me just say one other thing that has particular impact in New
    York and five or six other States. I think it is imperative that in this
    budget we are about to pass, that Congress include the provisions that I
    have recommended to restore benefits to legal immigrants who have been
    damaged and have health and other problems through no fault of their
    own. And I assure you I intend to fight hard for that, and I know that
    your delegation will, but we need your support. The Congress needs to
    understand that there are an awful lot of people who came here legally
    who are not on welfare, who are out working, who are paying taxes, and
    who wound up getting hurt and needing disability or health benefits
    through no fault of their own. And I think it's a mistake to cut them
    off. And so we're working on that, and I'd ask for your help on that.
        I'd like to turn the program back over to Dr. Forbes, but let me
    just say again, we've moved about a million people into the work force
    in the last 4 years and reduced the welfare rolls by 2.3 million. To
    meet the requirements of the law, it is a calculation of the Department
    of Health and Human Services, we have to meet another million in the
    next 4 years. We may or may not create 11\1/2\ million new jobs in the
    next 4 years. If we did it twice in a row, it would be something for
    sure. Whether or

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    not we do, we're going to have to do that. We can only do it if
    churches, nonprofits, and private employers make maximum use of tax
    credits, if the cities and States get the funds that I recommended to
    hire people in the public sector, and if the States provide the kind of
    flexibility to private employers everywhere in America that some have
    done in some places.
        You should know that Indiana and Wisconsin reduced their welfare
    rolls by 40 percent in the last 4 years--40 percent--by aggressive
    efforts and without particularly ungenerous programs either, just
    aggressive efforts. This can be done, and I need your help to do it. And
    I do think it's part of all of our mission in life, Doctor, to do this,
    anyway.
        Thank you.

    [At this point, the discussion began.]

        The President. Let me say, with all respect, I don't think it's that
    simple. I don't think it's accurate to say that this bill destroys the
    safety net for poor people. It maintains a Federal guarantee for poor
    women and children for nutrition, a Federal guarantee for health care,
    spends $4 billion more on child care, and says, simply, that if you are
    able bodied, you cannot stay on welfare forever without going into the
    work force. And the way the work participation requirements were put on
    States, by the year 2000 about 40 percent of all the able-bodied people
    in the welfare--able-bodied adults have to be in--have had some work
    experience within a given 2-year period. That's what it says.
        Now, I hardly--and when you consider the fact that the welfare
    population, Earl, is different than it used to be and that there are
    some people who are on it perpetually, I think it is a good thing, not a
    bad thing, that we did that.
        Number two, I do not think it is so simple to say that at any given
    moment in time there are a fixed number of people who have to be hired
    by all the employers in America, and if they hire a few more, they're
    all going down the tubes and lose money. This bill that I have proposed
    will give a 50 percent tax credit, up to $5,000 a year, for people who
    hire people. That means you can hire somebody for $10,000 a year and, in
    effect, the out-of-pocket cost to you is less than the minimum wage.
        I met a man with only 25 employees in Kansas City, and 5 of his
    employees were former welfare recipients. And they were happy at work,
    and he was happy with them. And he only hired them because he figured
    that the marginal cost of hiring them, since he got the welfare check as
    a wage subsidy for a couple of years, lowered his risk of adding to the
    work force. And sure enough, when he added to the work force, he
    generated some more work and it turned out to be a profitable decision
    for him.
        I talked to a former Governor last week who's back in private
    business, who's got a small business, who told me once I explained the
    proposal to him that he would now go hire three or four people from the
    welfare rolls because it lowered the marginal cost of adding employees
    to him. And there is no reason to believe, if we all work on this, that
    we can't create another million jobs over 4 years without bankrupting
    businesses and that it wouldn't be better for people who otherwise are
    going to be permanently dependent on welfare.
        And it is not true that we have withdrawn all supports. We are
    spending more on child care. I want to also spend $3 billion on public
    service related jobs to create over a third of a million there. And the
    health care and the nutrition guarantees are still there. So I think it
    will be a good thing if we make this work, but there is no automatic
    system for doing it, and that's why we need your help.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. Let me say this, first of all, I agree with what you
    said about people being in college--people who are going to college who
    are full-time students. We are looking at whether--if there's some way
    to get--to deal with that because I don't think people should be pulled
    out of college. I agree with that.
        Secondly, for one thing, you just--from the point of view of the
    State of New York, this is a--we're trying to work this out because the
    States basically have control of this. The State of New York would be
    much better with you as a college graduate, which is the point you tried
    to make. So I believe that.
        Now, the other problem is these training programs essentially are
    all run by the States and the cities. But I will do some--you've given
    me some things that we need to obviously do some work on. We need to
    make sure that there is an adequate training and preparation. That's one
    of the things I know that you've talked about--what you can do here
    because an awful

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    lot of people who move from welfare, who are just thrown into these
    jobs, don't last because they were never prepared for them in the first
    place, and they're traumatized as a result of it. And oftentimes, just
    basic preparation of a few months can make a--a few weeks even--can make
    all the difference in the world. So we'll go back and do--we will pay
    some more attention to that.
        But on the college education thing, I think you're right, and I
    think we ought to find some way to accommodate that, and we're working
    on that.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. If I could just make one point on that. Next to
    education and child care, the thing we hear most all around the country
    from people who seek to move from welfare to work or very often even to
    go to college is whether they have adequate transportation. And this
    ISTEA act that Lew just mentioned, which is--it took me a long time to
    remember what all those little letters were for. But the bottom line is,
    I asked the new Secretary of Transportation, Rodney Slater, to look at
    that to see that we were allocating enough money in here not only for
    mass transit but also for the appropriate subsidies to make sure that
    poor people could have access to this. Otherwise they won't be able to
    get to work.
        And this is an interesting opportunity for New York to make an
    alliance with smaller cities. For example, there was just a study on
    Atlanta, which said that in--something like 80 percent of the entry-
    level jobs in the city of Atlanta were filled by people who lived in
    low-income neighborhoods in Atlanta. In the suburban towns outside, just
    that touch Atlanta, only 55 percent were. And it was clearly the result
    of the inadequate ability of low-income people to access transportation
    to get there.
        So this is a huge issue, Lou. It's a huge issue for welfare reform
    and basically for the integrity of poor families to be able to sort of
    aspire and move and do things.
        Senator, were you going to say something about this?
        Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Yes. We very much appreciate your
    endorsing the existing formula, Mr. President. [Laughter]
        The President. Is that what I did?
        Senator Moynihan. Wyoming, Montana----
        The President. I thought we could do a little better on mass
    transit.
        Senator Moynihan. The newspapers out there, did you hear that?
    [Laughter]
        The President. Never misses a lick. [Laughter]

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. Let me say, as I'm sure you know, all the Members of
    Congress who are present here supported the efforts we made last year to
    raise the minimum wage. And that, plus doubling the earned-income tax
    credit, the refundable earned-income tax credit for lower income working
    people, led in 1995, before the minimum wage even went into--we had the
    biggest drop in poverty, in the poverty rate among single women with
    children in 20 years. And so I couldn't agree with you more.
        We have still 20 percent of our kids living in poverty. And it's not
    very complicated. I mean, it's the reverse of why we have lowered the
    poverty rate among our seniors to 11 percent, and it's the lowest it's
    ever been in history because we met a national, common commitment to
    investing in retirement and health care for seniors. And one of the
    things that I earnestly hope we can do is to--in the next 2 years is to
    do something really significant to deal with the fact there's still 10
    million children in our country without health care. And they're not
    primarily people who are presently on public assistance because they're
    eligible for Medicaid.
        But education, health care, and safety are the three big priorities
    that we have for our children. And I think they're all very important,
    and we're nowhere near where we ought to be there.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. Let me just say very briefly, I think you're right on
    both counts. We have five American corporations, including UPS and
    Sprint, Monsanto, Burger King, and somebody I've left out--United
    Airlines--who have agreed to head a national effort to get major
    corporations to hire and train people in good jobs.
        The second point you made, though, is absolutely right, we have to
    have--this will not work unless we also have a floor plan for publicly
    financed jobs for people in training programs in the beginning and also
    just continuing support for higher education. I'll give you an example.
    We've been working very hard for months now to try to get a new
    agreement among the

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    world's nations on telecommunications services, giving American
    companies the right to compete in other countries for telecommunications
    services. We finally got an agreement that was far better than I ever
    dreamed we could get. It is estimated it will bring a million new jobs
    to America--this one agreement--a million new jobs over the next 10
    years, but not one of those new jobs will be a low-skilled job. Every
    one of those jobs will require a level of skills and education that the
    folks that want to go to work but don't have those skills desperately
    need.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. One of the best things we did in the last session of
    Congress, in the last days, was to add 200,000 more work-study slots.
    There was another 100,000 in my new budget. If they pass, we will go to
    a million people on work-study in this country in the next 2 years.
        If we can do that, surely--if you think about the numbers you're
    talking about, you're talking about maybe 100,000 nationwide of the
    million people that must be in the work force--surely we can get some
    consideration for permitting a certain number of hours worked on the
    campus in connection with the legislation. I want to say that I think
    the one thing that I know that is not working, the way this thing is
    being applied now, is rules that in effect force people out of college.
    You know, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. These are not
    people who do not want to work. So I will work on that for you.

    [A participant presented the President with a gift.]

        The President. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:07 a.m. at Riverside Church. In his
    remarks, he referred to Rev. Dr. James Forbes, senior minister,
    Riverside Church; Rev. James Washington, chair, Riverside Church
    Council; Earl G. Graves, chief executive officer, Black Enterprise
    magazine; and Lewis Rudin, chairman, Association for a Better New York.