    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [January 25, 1999]
    [Pages 99-103]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the Welfare to Work Initiative
    January 25, 1999

        Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is a good way to start the
    day, isn't it? [Laughter] We're all going to feel better when we leave
    here.
        Let me thank the previous speakers. First, I want to thank Robert
    Higgins and his entire organization for
    setting an example for corporations throughout America. And I thank his
    employees for coming here today and for being a vivid human illustration
    of how welfare reform can work at its best.
        I thank my good friend of many years Governor Mel
    Carnahan, and Mrs. Carnahan, who is here with him. We made two of our major welfare
    reform announcements over the last several years in Missouri because no
    State has worked harder to do this right, in a both humane and effective
    way.

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        I want to thank Carlos--I was looking at
    him--I don't know how many--how many public speeches do you think Carlos
    has made in his life? [Laughter] Man, he stood up here; he had his head
    up, his shoulders back--I was thinking as I was watching him that after
    he does all that computer stuff and makes money for a few years, that
    we're always looking for a few good candidates in this business, and he
    looked awfully good. [Laughter]
        I would like to thank Secretary Shalala, Secretary Herman, and
    Secretary Slater for their work on welfare
    reform. And there are two Members of the House of Representatives here
    today who represent very different districts, but who have a passionate
    interest in this whole subject: Representative Ben Cardin from Maryland and Representative Ruben
    Hinojosa from south Texas. And I thank them
    for being here and for what they've done for this cause; and my good
    friend Jane Campbell, county commissioner from
    Cuyahoga County, Cleveland, Ohio.
        And I'd like to say a special word, if I might, before I get into my
    remarks, about Eli Segal, who started our Welfare
    to Work Partnership. You know, it takes a special--almost a genius to
    start something that didn't exist before. And a couple of years ago,
    when I announced in the State of the Union we were going to have this
    Welfare to Work Partnership, we had five companies. A couple of years
    later, we have 10,000 companies.
        Yesterday, you may have seen in the press, I went home to Arkansas
    to look at some terrible tornado damage. At each place where I went,
    both these places, there was a team of our young AmeriCorps volunteers
    from all over America--and most of them had never been to Arkansas
    before. And Governor, one of the teams was from St. Louis, working on
    the tornado damage. These young Americans give a year, sometimes 2 years
    of their lives; they earn credit for college. In 4 years there have been
    over 100,000 AmeriCorps volunteers. It took the Peace Corps 20 years to
    get to 100,000 volunteers. Eli Segal also started
    AmeriCorps. So for two great contributions to the United States, we
    thank him for this remarkable, remarkable thing.
        One of the reasons that I ran for President in 1992 was to change
    the welfare system as we then knew it, to move from a system that
    promoted independence and had no incentives for parents who are not
    custodial parents to be responsible, and basically gave people a check
    that was almost always inadequate in the name of being humane, which
    assumed, more often than not, that they had no capacity to work and
    support their children.
        All these things were done with the best of intentions. We either
    assumed people couldn't do the right thing, or we assumed that they
    wouldn't do the right thing. And so, well, we made the best of an
    imperfect world by at least cutting a check once a month and then making
    sure that--and I approve of this and kept it--there were nutritional and
    health benefits for the children.
        And it seemed to me that we ought to, before we just continued to
    give up on this--we now had created a couple or three generations, in
    some places, of people who depended on welfare checks and repeated the
    pattern of the past--that we ought to try to develop a system that at
    least would try to create incentives and, where appropriate,
    requirements that would promote independence, work, and family
    responsibilities.
        Now, everybody liked the idea and wanted to do it, but a lot of
    people, including a lot of very good people who had labored for years in
    this system, doubted that it could be done. And so we started working at
    it. And in the past 6 years, I think it's obvious that the American
    people have done a lot to change all that.
        When I became President, I worked with 43 States--Governor Carnahan
    mentioned this--before we passed legislation, to just free them of
    Federal rules which undermined their ability to create a system that
    would promote work and family. There were many innovative programs that
    already were beginning to move large numbers of people from welfare to
    work, even before 1996. It was in that year that I was able to sign the
    landmark bipartisan welfare reform law. I said then that our Nation's
    answers to the problems of poverty will no longer be a never-ending
    cycle of welfare but, instead, the dignity, the power, the ethic of
    work.
        Today, we can actually foresee a time when we can break the cycle of
    welfare for good, when welfare will literally be a support system given
    to people in hard economic times or when personal misfortune occurs, but
    that it will not be the rule of life for large numbers of our fellow
    citizens.
        Already we now see welfare rolls in America are the lowest they've
    been in 30 years--for

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    the first time in 30 years--below 8 million people, down by 44 percent
    since I took office. And the same people--the number of people on
    welfare who are also working some, taking that first step toward
    responsibility, has tripled. Every State--every State--is now meeting
    the work participation standards required under the welfare reform law,
    something I confess that even I did not believe would happen. None of us
    believed that they would. Every single one of them so far is meeting the
    work participation standards of the welfare reform law.
        America is working again, and this work is transforming lives and
    families. The welfare system is no longer holding people back; it is
    helping them to move ahead.
        Since the goal here--and let's not forget what the goal is: it is to
    empower individuals and strengthen families. We've had to do more than
    simply put time limits on welfare. As I said a moment ago, those who
    lose their welfare checks continue to get health and nutritional support
    for their children, and they should. It was one of the big battles we
    fought here when we debated this, and it led to two vetoes before we
    finally got a bill that I felt that I could sign.
        We also have increased our support for training, for transportation,
    for child care for those who move from welfare to work, recognizing that
    there are barriers and we shouldn't expect people to actually move from
    welfare to work and lower their standard of living and lower their
    ability to support their children. And there is more support for child
    care, substantially more, in this budget and for other things.
        We have given more support for health care and child care for all
    low income working families. I think that our citizens should never
    forget that the largest number of poor people in America are the working
    poor, and we should be sensitive of that. And with the help of Congress,
    we have doubled the earned-income tax credit for families with children.
    That is a targeted tax cut that's especially generous to low income
    working families. And today it's worth about $1,000 to every family of
    four with an income of under $30,000; and for families of two and three,
    lower incomes, it's worth quite a lot of money. So this was a major
    contribution of the economic plan of 1993, and it alone, along with the
    increase in the minimum wage, has lifted over 2 million children out of
    poverty.
        And finally let me say, as all of you know, I am trying to raise the
    minimum wage again because I don't think people should work so poor
    children can still be in poverty.
        I think it is very important, however, that we recognize that much
    of the success of welfare reform has come because of the growth of the
    economy at large, nearly 18 million new jobs in the last 6 years. I also
    think we have to recognize that much of the success of welfare reform
    has come because of the commitment of people in the private sector to do
    the right thing. I think that if there were no companies willing to have
    the example that Fleet has offered us today, this would be much, much
    harder.
        And as we look ahead to the future, we have to assume that reaching
    the next 8 million people--or just under 8 million people--on welfare
    will be even more challenging than reaching the 44 percent reduction
    that we have seen achieved already. Therefore, since it's not fair to
    require people to work unless they have a chance to work, we have to
    honor and build up and work with the private sector to make sure they
    have that chance.
        As I said, we started 2 years ago with five companies in the Welfare
    to Work Partnership. Today there are 10,000. They have hired, retrained,
    and often promoted literally hundreds of thousands of people. And as you
    have heard, this is not charity. It's good for families, but it's also
    good for the bottom line and good for the communities.
        Now, smaller caseloads, bigger paychecks are important signs of
    progress. But I think it's also important that we recognize this is
    about more than economics. And I think you can see that. There's
    something intangible, even beyond the money, involved here: the sense of
    security of these newly working members of our country, the sense of
    pride at being able to support a child and being able to be a fully
    participating member of society.
        So we have to do more, and we now know what works. And we've seen
    examples of it today. We know that long-term welfare recipients can be
    turned into full-time workers. Now we must ensure that we go to the next
    step, that we deal with the remaining people on welfare, and that we do
    it recognizing that it is a challenge but also a phenomenal opportunity
    for the United States and a responsibility for those of us who can do
    something about it.

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        In my State of the Union Address last week, I said that we can help
    another 200,000 Americans move from welfare to work with extra support
    in the Federal budget. To achieve that, I propose first that we renew
    the welfare to work program, which is set to expire in the year 2000. My
    balanced budget includes $1 billion to help States and communities build
    upon their record of success. It also dedicates $150 million of those
    funds to low income fathers who fulfill their duty to work, to pay child
    support, to become part of their children's lives.
        And I think all of us were thrilled by Carlos' statement. But I
    would like to make one point here that he made that I think ought to be
    made more explicit. There is a reason that welfare reform has worked.
    There is a reason that programs like this magnificent program in
    Minnesota, giving fathers the tools they need to support their children,
    has worked. And that is, most people are basically good people who want
    to do the right thing. You know, we have all these programs, we talk
    about all these policies, and we hardly ever say that. But I think
    that's worth stating. You saw a good person up here talking about a
    child he loved. And it's so easy to forget that. The reason all this
    stuff can be done is that human nature will rise to the level of
    possibility if given the opportunity and the guidance and the support.
    That's the reason these rolls have reduced so much.
        You know, I hardly ever--when I was Governor for 12 years, I ran a
    welfare system in a poor State. I don't believe I ever met--and I went
    to welfare offices, and I sat and talked with caseworkers and welfare
    recipients, and went through the details of it. And I have never met a
    person who has said, ``You know, I really love getting this welfare
    check, and I hope I never have to hit a lick.'' [Laughter] I never met a
    person who said, ``Gosh, I'm proud that I never paid any child support
    to my child.'' You know, there may be a few, but to pretend that that is
    anything like more than a small minority is a foolish assumption.
        So I say, this is very important. And this $150 million to support
    people, so there can be more stories like Carlos Rosas', is very, very
    important. Many States are using some of their welfare-to-work funds, as
    you heard from Governor Carnahan already, to get fathers to sign
    personal responsibility contracts, to do the right thing by their
    children. And now this extra $150 million will help to ensure that every
    State can have this kind of effort, and that every community that has
    any substantial number of people who would fall under this category can
    do the kinds of things we've heard about in this Minnesota program.
        But we have more to do. With the longest peacetime expansion in
    history, with a continually growing economy, businesses have to reach
    wider to get new talent. They have to bring more welfare recipients into
    the workplace if we're going to continue to grow.
        So we have to see this as an opportunity to make permanent gains in
    dealing with the welfare challenge. And therefore, I think we have to do
    more to help those recipients who are still on the rolls. And as I said,
    they're often the greatest challenges to getting people into the work
    force.
        Example number one--that's why Secretary Slater is here today--two-thirds of the new jobs in America are
    in the suburbs; three-quarters of the welfare recipients are in the
    cities or in isolated rural areas. So you've got the jobs in the middle,
    and the welfare recipients in the cities or in the rural areas. Our
    balanced budget will double funding to get workers to the workplace--for
    transportation support. It also has a 50 percent increase in housing
    vouchers, to help families find affordable homes closer to the jobs and
    avoid difficult and sometimes actually impossible commutes.
        Now, these are the kinds of things that I think we ought to be
    doing. We don't have any excuse not to do it. We have the example of
    Fleet. We have the example of Missouri and Governor Carnahan. We have
    the example of Carlos Rosas. We have the example of these fine women who
    stood up when they were introduced as employees of Fleet. And we now
    know that it is not only the right thing to do for our country; it is
    the right thing to do for our companies.
        So I hope that we will have enormous bipartisan support for this new
    advance in the welfare budget. And I hope all of you will do everything
    you can to spread the word across the country that it is good for
    America to do this, and it will work because most people are good people
    and they want to do the right thing.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:02 a.m. in the Presidential Hall
    (formerly Room 450) of the Old

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    Executive Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Robert J.
    Higgins, president and chief operating officer, Fleet Financial Group;
    Gov. Mel Carnahan of Missouri and his wife, Jean; former welfare
    recipient Carlos Rosas, who introduced the President; and Eli Segal,
    president and chief executive officer, Welfare to Work Partnership. The
    President also referred to Public Law 104-193, the Personal
    Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.