[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

[[Page 844]]

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.