Bill Clinton: “Good morning. As a candidate for President, I pledged to end welfare as we know it. And as President, I've been doing…”

“Good morning. As a candidate for President, I pledged to end welfare as we know it. And as President, I've been doing everything in my power to keep that pledge. Earlier, for more than 15 years, first as Governor of Arkansas and later when I became President, I have always felt it was critically important to fix our broken welfare system. It doesn't honor our values of work and family and personal responsibility. Well, it's been a long time coming, but finally the Senate is taking up this issue. Meanwhile, over the last 2\1/2\ years, while I've been urging Congress to act, my administration has worked as hard as we can to change the welfare system by executive action in a way that honors the values most Americans hold dear: work, responsibility, and family. We've put tough child support enforcement at the center of the national debate. Our administration collected a record level of child support in 1994--$10 billion. And I signed a tough Executive order to crack down on Federal employees who owe child support. We've also cut through Federal redtape to speed up welfare reform all around the country by approving experiments in a record 34 States. Just through these experiments, 7 million recipients of welfare around the country are now being required to work, pay child support, live at home, and stay in school or earn a paycheck from a business that pays them with money that used to be spent on food stamps and welfare.…”