Trent Lott: “Mr. President, over the years we have watched a program that we started some 60 years ago with very good intentions to…”

“Mr. President, over the years we have watched a program that we started some 60 years ago with very good intentions to help the weak and the genuinely poor people in this country to be able to get some degree of temporary assistance to help them exist. We have watched over the years as the taxpayers of this country worked hard to try to look after their families, tried to get clothes to put their children in school, and pay their taxes. Then they began to wonder, who was thinking about them? Because they saw this program continue to grow and build, and they saw it continue to cost more and more billions of dollars, and they saw abuses. Then they started to worry. What about the children that are getting locked into this system of welfare dependency? Over the years it moved in that direction--to where we have disaffection on all sides; those who pay the bills for the welfare program and those who are on the program. People ask: Who is it really helping? Is it really giving people a lift out of poverty, or it is it locking them in? Does it really help the children when the parents are not able to get a job, they do not have the training, the education, nor the day care to be able to really get a job? Who is the real loser? The children have become the losers of this program. It has become a program of dependency without a way out. That is what this bill is really about.”