    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [May 27, 1998]
    [Pages 842-845]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Welfare to Work Partnership Board
    May 27, 1998

        Thank you very much. Secretary Herman,
    Secretary Shalala, Administrator
    Alvarez, Director Lachance, thank you. Let me begin by thanking all of you for coming.
    I thank especially three Members of the House of Representatives who are
    here, Congressmen Payne, Gordon, and Davis, who are up here on
    the front row. I can't thank Eli Segal enough for
    the wonderful work he has done. He has now given birth to two of the
    most important initiatives of this administration: first, our national
    service corps project, AmeriCorps, which now has about 100,000 alumni to
    its credit who have earned money for college by serving in their
    communities; and now the Welfare to Work Partnership.

    [[Page 843]]

        I want to thank Gerry Greenwald for
    being willing to take on the leadership of this operation when no one
    could have known that it would turn out as well as it has. I thank the
    members of the board of directors and the other business supporters who
    are here. I thank the former welfare recipients and others who have
    supported them who are here.
        I want to say a word about Rhonda, but
    first I want to tell you that Tonya Oden, who is
    over here sitting to my left, spoke on a program like this at the Cessna
    Corporation in Wichita, Kansas. And she did a great job, and all of her
    folks were cheering for her. And I was listening to Rhonda, thinking,
    the best part of this program is over--after she finished, I thought,
    the best part of this program is over. [Laughter]
        When you hear someone like Rhonda talk, you
    look at the people who are here and see these fine children, this is
    really a case where a picture is worth a million words. We will see a
    lot more of Rhonda pretty soon because the Welfare to Work Partnership
    is airing some new national public service announcements with her as the
    spokesperson. And I want to thank Time Warner for helping us to put them
    on the air and say that I am quite confident that she will inspire a lot
    of other people to follow her lead.
        The Welfare to Work Partnership was based on the simple premise that
    now that we have passed the welfare reform law which required all able-
    bodied people who could work to work, we had a moral obligation as a
    society to provide a job to all those people who were about to lose
    their guaranteed benefits for idleness. It began with an understanding
    that we had to change the welfare system. And the conversation
    Rhonda related between herself and her daughter
    says more than I could ever say.
        I began working on this problem almost 20 years ago now. And I used
    to--when I was a Governor, I used to gather up former welfare recipients
    and put them on panels and make Governors listen to people talk about
    the difference in their lives as parents, as citizens, the difference in
    their self-image when they were productive members of society.
        After I became President, we worked with 43 different States to get
    them out from under Federal rule so they could start programs that would
    help move more people from welfare to work. And then in 1996 I signed a
    historic bipartisan welfare reform law that literally ended the old
    welfare system as we knew it. It said that we would continue to
    guarantee health care and nutrition to low-income families and children,
    but that after a certain amount of time, people who could go to work had
    to go to work. It also said that we had to provide more in the way of
    child care and other supports for people who did move from welfare to
    work.
        But that left a big gap. How were all these people going to find
    jobs? Would the existing system do it? That's what led to the creation
    of the Welfare to Work Partnership a year ago. And again let me say, I
    am profoundly indebted to the business people who are here and those who
    they represent.
        We announced a year ago 100 companies had joined the partnership. We
    set a goal of reaching 1,000 companies within a year. We underestimated
    by a factor of 5; there are now more than 5,000 companies in this
    partnership. And what Eli and Gerry didn't say that I want to make clear
    is, they didn't just put their name on the dotted line. All sorts of
    businesses, large and small and middle-size, have together in the last
    year hired 135,000 welfare recipients who are now employees thanks to
    what they have done. That's an astonishing record in only a year, and I
    thank them for it.
        Let me point out to the skeptics, 70 percent--70 percent--of that
    135,000 jobs are full-time jobs with full health benefits. [Applause]
    Yeah, that's really worth clapping for.
        Now, as Gerry pointed out and as many of the members of the board of
    directors told me earlier, right before we came over here, this is not
    just good for America and not just good for these families; it's also
    turned out to be good for the businesses involved, many of whom find
    that these new workers stay on the job longer, with less turnover, and
    later work to motivate their coworkers.
        We've tried to do our part. Aida Alvarez
    and the Small Business Administration are trying to connect new workers
    to small businesses to make sure that our most vibrant, growing sector
    of the society, in terms of employees, takes on a fair share of people
    from welfare to work. We've tried to mobilize religious and civic and
    nonprofit groups under the Vice President's
    leadership to provide mentoring and support and help people get into and
    stay in jobs. The Federal Government has hired 4,800 people from welfare
    to work in the last year; our goal is 10,000 by the year 2000, and we
    will make

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    that. Seven work in the Executive Office of the President, and I'm
    particularly proud of them. The balanced budget agreement I signed into
    law last summer provides $3 billion to help our communities move long-
    term, harder-to-place welfare recipients into jobs.
        Now, these combined efforts have produced, along with the rising
    economy, rather stunning results. When I took office, there were more
    than 14 million people on welfare, about 5\1/2\ percent of the Nation's
    population. It actually peaked in February of '94; it's the highest
    percentage we'd ever had. Today, there are fewer than 9 million people
    on welfare, 3.3 percent of the population, the lowest percentage of the
    population on welfare since 1969.
        Now, this is a very hard-won victory for everybody who was a part of
    it. But the most important part of it are the families. I think when we
    look at Rhonda, when we look at Tonya, when we look at Rhonda's
    kids there, when we look at all of the other
    people who have moved from welfare to work who are here, we have to ask
    ourselves, what else do we have to do? Because I can promise you that
    there still are going to be people who can be moved from welfare to work
    who aren't there yet.
        First, we have to find more private sector jobs. I would like to ask
    the Welfare to Work Partnership in 1998 to double the number of people
    they hire and to double the number of companies that are participating.
    Now, that sounds outrageous, but I just asked for 1,000 companies and
    you produced 5,000, so--[laughter]--mathematically I'm asking for less.
    [Laughter] I got good grades in math; I know about that. [Laughter]
        And again, I hope that the people who will watch the public service
    announcements that Rhonda will do will
    understand this is an enormous opportunity. One of the things that our
    economists sit around and worry about here in Washington all the time
    is, they say, ``Well, we've got 4.3 unemployment; we've averaged way
    over 3 percent growth the last couple of years; how can we keep growing
    this economy without having inflation?'' The answer is, go into the
    neighborhoods where there are still a lot of poor people who are
    unemployed and on public assistance and give them a chance to be a part
    of the American free enterprise system. That's an inflation-free way to
    expand the American economy. So we have to do this.
        The second thing we have to do is to help more welfare recipients
    succeed in the workplace. The employers today told me that one of the
    hardest things for people moving from welfare to work is still providing
    transportation, providing child care, making sure for the smaller
    businesses that may not be able to afford all the training and education
    that there's support there. We have to do more.
        Let me say that the highway bill, which just passed the Congress,
    I'm proud to say, has a substantial amount of money in it to help defray
    the transportation costs of people moving from welfare to work. The
    tobacco bill, which has not yet passed but which I hope and pray will
    pass, has in it or will have in it a provision, if the agreement we've
    made with the Governors prevails, which will lead to a substantial
    investment in helping to defray the child care costs. The Labor
    Department has awarded grants to support 49 innovative efforts around
    the country that provide training and education that help people move
    from entry-level jobs to higher paying positions, that help fathers go
    to work so they can take more responsibility for their children. So we
    have to do more, and we're going to.
        Now, finally, I think we've got an obligation to continue to fix--
    we've already made a good start--but to continue to fix parts of the
    welfare reform bill that didn't have anything to do with welfare reform.
    Last year Congress acted--and I appreciate it--to restore important
    disability and health benefits to legal immigrants, people who come here
    legally and have a right to work and have, in my view, a right to
    supports.
        Two weeks ago the Senate voted overwhelmingly to restore food stamps
    to elderly, disabled, and very young legal immigrants. And I hope the
    House will follow their lead. That's the right thing to do. At this
    moment of prosperity, when we're trying to support each other, move more
    people into the workplace, when a lot of immigrants are filling needed
    work positions and we have low unemployment, we owe it to ourselves to
    do the right thing here.
        Now again, let me say that the best part of this program was before
    I ever got up here. And I want you to remember when you walk out of here
    what Rhonda looked like when she got up here
    and what her kids
    looked like when they stood up, being proud of their mother, and how
    Gerry's happier doing this than he would
    have been if he'd won that $100 million

    [[Page 845]]

    lottery. [Laughter] He may not know that, but he is. [Laughter] And I
    want us to go out and double our results by next year.
        We've got to prove that we did the right thing in welfare reform for
    all the American people that are willing to do the right thing by
    themselves, their children, and our country. And if we ever needed
    evidence that it is right, we've got it here today in full.
        Thank you all, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:17 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Office of Personnel Management
    Director Janice R. Lachance; Representative Danny K. Davis; Eli Segal,
    president and chief executive officer, and United Airlines executive
    Gerald Greenwald, chairman, Welfare to Work Partnership; former welfare
    recipients Rhonda Costa and Tonya Oden; and Ms. Costa's daughters,
    Lakiyah and Lashana.