[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 22 (Monday, June 1, 1998)]
[Pages 969-971]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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.
    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,

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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 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 and a half 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

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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 work place, 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 
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.