    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [August 3, 1999]
    [Pages 1372-1375]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1372]]

    Opening Remarks to the National Welfare to Work Forum in Chicago,
    Illinois
    August 3, 1999

        Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the warm,
    wonderful welcome when I came in. Mr. Mayor, thank you for your friendship and your leadership. Chicago
    is a beautiful, beautiful city, and it works.
        I think I should simply begin by thanking the people of this city
    and this State for being so good to me and to Hillary and to Al and
    Tipper Gore and to our administration, and for setting an example of
    what we can do to make America work. I'm also kind of getting used to
    seeing all these pretty cows all over the place here. [Laughter] I was
    trying to think of what animals I could start putting all over the White
    House lawn when I get back, to follow the mayor's lead. [Laughter]
        I would like to say that Governor Ryan
    and Governor Thompson were here earlier. I
    thank them for coming by. I thank Governor Carper of Delaware for being here; Mayor Webb, Mayor Helmke, Mayor
    Morial, Mayor O'Neill. I thank Secretary Herman, our Secretary of Labor; Secretary of Transportation
    Slater; and Secretary Bill Daley, another native of this great city, for his work at
    Commerce; and Small Business Administrator Aida Alvarez.
        Secretary Shalala, our HHS Secretary,
    has been heavily involved in this. She's not here today, but I want to
    thank Olivia Golden and Al Collins for being here. And most of all, I want to thank the
    leaders of this remarkable business partnership, my good friend Eli
    Segal, who is the best startup person in the
    world.
        Many of you know this, but when I became President, I asked
    Eli to head our national service program,
    AmeriCorps. And we got it through the Congress, and in 4 years,
    AmeriCorps had 100,000 young people serving in our communities, earning
    money to go to school, a goal that took the Peace Corps 20 years to
    reach.
        So, I thought, ``Well, we need to get more employers involved in
    hiring people from welfare to work. I'll ask Eli
    to do it. Then I won't even have to think about it anymore.'' [Laughter]
    And so Eli got Gerry Greenwald and Paul
    Clayton, Robert Shapiro, Bill Esrey, and Jim
    Kelly, and they started, with five. And I
    said--then there were 5,000. And I said, ``But we need 10,000.'' And now
    there are 12,000. I think if I told them we needed 25,000, next year
    we'd have 30,000 employers here. And I thank him so much.
        And I want to thank Gerry especially
    for chairing our efforts. I understand he runs an airline company in his
    off hours--[laughter]--but I think most of the time, he's spent on this
    project in the last few years.
        Six and a half years ago I asked the American people to join me on a
    crusade to transform our system of welfare into a system of work; to
    transform a system of dependence into a system of independence; to prove
    that poor people could succeed, at the same time, at work and in raising
    their children; to bring a whole generation of Americans into the
    mainstream of our life.
        Now you see the signs of the transformation everywhere: Inner-city
    buses that used to be empty at rush hour are packed; tax preparation
    services are moving into abandoned storefronts, helping former welfare
    recipients fill out the first tax forms of their lives. There are more
    subtle changes: mothers collecting their mail with a little more pride
    because they know they'll see a bank statement, not a welfare check;
    children going to school with their heads held a little higher.
        It's difficult to remember that 7 years ago our country was largely
    out of work and out of ideas. Our economy was stagnant, burdened with a
    crushing debt and soaring deficits, high interest rates and high
    unemployment. But so was our political debate. For some, the welfare
    system was our last line of defense against abject poverty. To others,
    it was exhibit A of America's decline.
        Clearly, it had become a system that undermined our cherished values
    of work and family. When I was a Governor, a job I had for a dozen years
    before your were kind enough to give me this one, I had the chance to
    actually go to welfare offices, talk to caseworkers, talk to recipients,
    watch people check in. I spent hours, over a period of years, talking to
    welfare recipients, asking them, what would it take to make the system
    work for them, and listening

    [[Page 1373]]

    to them tell me all the manifold ways in which welfare discouraged work
    and independence.
        I asked the American people to change course, to restore with all of
    our people the fundamental bargain that we ought to have opportunity for
    all in return for responsibility from all our citizens, and to include
    everyone in America's community.
        Today, the bargain is being fulfilled, and our country is working
    again. We have the longest peacetime expansion in history, nearly 19
    million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in a generation, the lowest
    minority unemployment ever recorded, the highest homeownership in
    history. From a deficit of $290 billion, we are moving to a surplus of
    $99 billion, and this year alone we will pay $85 billion on our national
    debt.
        And a big part of this is the decision the American people, through
    their elected Representatives, made to end welfare as we know it. We
    raised the minimum wage and passed the earned-income tax credit, which
    says to working families, if you work full-time, you shouldn't have to
    raise your children in poverty. We gave 43 waivers to States to launch
    their own welfare reform efforts when I took office. And then in 1996,
    as has already been said, a big bipartisan majority, big majorities of
    both parties and both Houses reached across the divide to pass this
    welfare reform bill.
        We recognize that in addition to requiring able-bodied people to
    work within a certain period of time, millions of people who had never
    known anything but dependency, who had never even seen, many of them,
    their own parents have a job, could not make the transition on their own
    or easily. So we made sure there was extra support for child care, for
    transportation, for housing, and we kept the national guarantee, after
    two vetoes, but we kept the national guarantee of medical care and
    nutrition for the children of people on welfare and for those moving
    off.
        We also provided new tax incentives to encourage employers to hire
    people from welfare. Today I am very proud to be able to tell you that
    all 50 States and the District of Columbia have now met the work
    requirements for the percentage of people on welfare in their States
    that have to be in work that we set in 1996. Every single State is in
    compliance.
        The welfare rolls have been cut in half; they're at their lowest
    level in 32 years. And those who are on welfare today are 4 times as
    likely to work as when I took office. Now, while some of the credit,
    doubtless, goes to our booming economy, the Council of Economic Advisers
    recently did a study for me which found that welfare reform, with its
    new emphasis on work, has been the single most important factor in
    reducing the rolls. Three-quarters of the 6.8 million people who have
    left welfare since I took office did so after welfare reform was signed
    in 1996. And many who left before did so under the reform efforts
    adopted by the States.
        The credit goes to all of you in this audience and people like you
    across our country. When we passed the law in '96, I said moving
    Americans from welfare to work would take the commitment of every
    element of our society, not just Government but businesses, faith-based
    organizations, community groups, and private citizens. The Vice
    President has done a tremendous job of
    bringing our religious and service organizations together in his
    coalition to sustain success. And in 1997, as I said, my long-time
    friend Eli Segal agreed to help to rally the
    business community and you know the rest. Today, he, Gerry
    Greenwald, and the other founders have
    built a partnership that is 12,000 businesses strong.
        Members of this welfare to work partnership, businesses both large
    and small, have given--listen to this--just the members of this
    partnership have given 410,000 welfare recipients the opportunity to
    have a job. More than 8 in 10 executives report great success in hiring
    people off welfare rolls. They're finding these employees are a good
    investment. They work hard; they stay in their jobs as long or even
    longer than other employees. And in this era of labor shortages, we must
    not forget that welfare recipients can be a rich pool of untapped
    talent, people who are good for the bottom line. I thank you for
    recognizing the important role you can play in extending these
    opportunities to all Americans.
        I am proud to say, also under the Vice President's leadership, the Federal Government has done its part. Our
    goal was to hire 10,000 people by this year from welfare. We have now
    hired 14,000--in the smallest Federal Government since 1963.
        Mr. Mayor, one of the people we hired
    from welfare is here with us today. Her name is Maria
    Hernandez. She was on public assistance for
    more than 3 years; now she's worked as

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    an administrative assistant in our Cook County north census office since
    January. Thank you, Maria, and thank all the rest of you who are here
    who reflect the same story.
        Now, before we get on with the program today, I want to tell you
    that as pleased as we are, we have to do more. And I'd like to mention
    the things that I believe we have to do to make the most of this
    economic opportunity for America, to fulfill our moral obligation, to
    promote the values of work and family to the people still on public
    assistance and those who teeter going back and forth.
        First, we must continue to honor our commitment to welfare reform.
    There are some in Congress who want to cut the welfare block grants we
    give to the States and take some of that money back, because the welfare
    rolls are so low, to finance a big tax cut. I think that would be a
    mistake, and here's why; here's why: In every State, there are still
    people who could move from welfare to work if they had more training, if
    they had transportation, if they had child care. In every State, there
    are people who may be working today who might have to leave the work
    force, for lack of transportation or child care. In every State, there
    are people who can stay on the job if they get further training.
        So I say, let's spend this money to develop the human capacity of
    our people. It will make the economy stronger, and we will all be better
    off.
        There are other things which need to be done. I have asked the
    Congress to build on the welfare-to-work program, by helping those who
    are least prepared to work. My welfare-to-work budget this year contains
    extra funds for adult literacy and for education and training for
    adults. I think that's important.
        We must also do more to help low-income fathers honor their
    responsibility to pay child support to their children. Three years ago
    we strengthened our child support enforcement laws. This welfare-to-work
    budget targets funds to help responsible fathers work and pay child
    support. I hope Congress will pass it.
        Let me say, we also need to make sure that when people move from
    welfare to work, they understand, if they're in low-income jobs, that
    their kids are still entitled to Medicaid coverage if their employer
    doesn't offer health care, and to food stamps, so they'll have adequate
    nutrition.
        The only piece of troubling news in this whole happy scenario is
    that there has been a drop in use of food stamps among low-income people
    that is greater than the number of people who have moved into jobs with
    incomes above that level. No one can find the answer for me, and we've
    been looking now for weeks and weeks and weeks. But I think, clearly,
    what has happened is, a lot of people moved from welfare to work;
    they're delighted to be at work; and they literally don't know that
    they're still eligible for this assistance. That's what I think is going
    on. So we have to work on that, and a lot of you here can help.
        We also have to strengthen our commitment to child care. For years,
    mothers on welfare chose not to work because to do so would literally
    have hurt their children, because it would have cost them more in child
    care than they could make on the job. In 1996 we added $4 billion to our
    child care subsidy, but believe it or not, we have only met one-tenth of
    the need. So I ask Congress to pass our child care initiative, to
    provide more child care subsidies and tax credits to needy families and
    new funds to improve the quality of care. This will also help to sustain
    welfare reform.
        To finish the job, I've asked Congress to double our commitment to
    transportation assistance to provide 25,000 new welfare-to-work housing
    vouchers so people can live near their jobs. To finish the job, I have
    asked Congress to increase the minimum wage, to make sure, when people
    work, they are living above the poverty line. And to finish the job, we
    have to recognize that there are whole communities--big inner-city
    neighborhoods, places in Appalachia, places in the Mississippi Delta,
    small towns where the only factory has moved away, Native American
    reservations--where the light of prosperity has not shined on the whole
    community.
        Last month I traveled across America to shine that spotlight on the
    inner cities, on the Mississippi Delta, on Appalachia, on the Native
    American communities. I saw families doing their best to raise children
    in neighborhoods where unemployment and poverty were more than double
    the national average. On some of our Indian reservations it is above 70
    percent.
        I ask your help in passing my new markets initiative, because it
    will give American investors the same incentives to invest in poor
    neighborhoods in America we give them today to invest

    [[Page 1375]]

    in poor countries around the world. I think it is a very, very good
    idea.
        And finally, I ask you to continue your work. We all know that the
    people who still are on welfare, by and large, are the most difficult to
    place in work. We all know that they are the most likely to have
    children with special needs, or limited levels of education and skills,
    or to be a long way from an available workplace with no transportation
    funds. We know there are problems out there, but we also know that there
    are good people who wish to go to work and ought to have the chance. And
    so I ask you to stay at this and to recruit some of your vendors and
    clients, to reach out to small business people you know, to ask others
    to join this crusade.
        I want to say a special word of thanks to IBM for sponsoring a new
    on-line network that can help match businesses who need workers with
    welfare recipients who need jobs. And for out part, I want you to know
    I'm working to extend the welfare-to-work tax credit and the work
    opportunity tax credit to reward those of you who take the chance on
    giving more Americans a chance.
        The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy once said that, ``work is the
    true source of human welfare.'' In this era of unprecedented prosperity,
    we still have some work of our own to do to make sure the we embrace all
    Americans in this prosperity and to give every American the chance to
    succeed at work and to succeed at home.
        I thank every one of you for what you have done, and I ask you to
    support the initiatives I outlined with the Congress and to stay at the
    job until we can literally say we have completely ended welfare as we
    know it, and America is a better place because our families are
    stronger, our children are growing up in more stable homes, and every
    adult American who is willing to work has a chance to do so.
        Thank you very, very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:10 a.m. at the Navy Pier Festival Hall.
    In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago; Gov.
    George H. Ryan of Illinois; Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin; Gov.
    Thomas R. Carper of Delaware; Mayor Wellington E. Webb of Denver, CO;
    Mayor Paul Helmke of Fort Wayne, IN; Mayor Marc H. Morial of New
    Orleans, LA; Mayor Beverly O'Neill of Long Beach, CA; Assistant
    Secretary of Health and Human Services Olivia A. Golden, Administration
    for Children and Families; Alvin C. Collins, Director, Office of Family
    Assistance, Administration for Children and Families; Eli Segal,
    president and chief executive officer, Welfare to Work Partnership;
    Gerald Greenwald, chairman and chief executive officer, United Airlines
    Corp.; Paul Clayton, president, Burger King North America; Robert B.
    Shapiro, chairman, president, and chief executive officer, Monsanto Co.;
    William T. Esrey, chairman and chief executive officer, Sprint Corp.;
    and James P. Kelly, chairman and chief executive officer, United Parcel
    Service.