[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 31 (Monday, August 9, 1999)]
[Pages 1547-1550]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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

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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 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

[[Page 1549]]

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 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. 
[Applause] Thank you.
    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

[[Page 1550]]

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 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. [Applause] Thank you.
    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 Morial of New Orleans, 
LA; Mayor Beverly O'Neill of Long Beach, CA; Assistant Secretary of 
Health and Human Services Olivia 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.