Joe Baca: “I oppose H.R. 4, the Personal Responsibility, Work and Family and Promotion Act. I opposed this bill during the last…”

“I oppose H.R. 4, the Personal Responsibility, Work and Family and Promotion Act. I opposed this bill during the last Congress and I oppose it now. For as long as I remain in this House, I will oppose any bill that claims to help American families while punishing them. I oppose H.R. 4 because it offers no educational opportunities, and I state, no educational opportunities. It does not provide for adequate funding for child care, for child care, I state. It is very important to a lot of us. It does not restore the benefits to legal permanent residents. I am tired of bills that pretend to promote families, that pretend to promote families. I am tired of bills that tell the unemployed that you are just lazy. Unemployment rates are steadily climbing in our country. It is time we get serious about fixing our problem. If you ask any person on welfare in this country if they would be rather working, overwhelmingly the majority would say yes. They desire to work and we should make sure we do increase the workforce. We are at a time in our country where we do not have the employment right now, and more and more people are in poverty. And yet we are asking many of these individuals to go out and fight for this country. And yet we are willing to put more people out in the streets and not provide jobs. We should be providing jobs. We should be providing educational training, vocational programs. We need to have access to English language training.”