George Miller: “today is a serious and sad day. Not only are we presented with a welfare bill by the Republicans that for the first time…”

“today is a serious and sad day. Not only are we presented with a welfare bill by the Republicans that for the first time in history does a great deal of harm to children in this country, but we have learned in the last few minutes that the President of the United States, Mr. Clinton, now says that he will sign that bill. This is a President who, along with the First Lady, have spent much of their public life trying to help children. Now he says he will sign a bill that, for the first time, knowingly, he knowingly, he has been presented the evidence by his own Cabinet, he has been presented the evidence by the Urban Institute and others, that will knowingly put somewhere around 1 million children who are currently not into poverty, into poverty. Almost half of those children are in families that are working, where people get up and they go to work every day. But at the end of the year, they are poor. This bill puts those children into poverty. That cannot be a proper purpose of the U.S. Congress, and that cannot be a proper endorsement for the President of the United States. It is against the interest of our children.”