Lynn C. Woolsey: “Mr. Chairman, as a Member of Congress who has actually been on welfare, let me tell Members, I know the pitfalls of H.R.…”

“Mr. Chairman, as a Member of Congress who has actually been on welfare, let me tell Members, I know the pitfalls of H.R. 4. I know the pitfalls of the Republican welfare bill. I also know what we have learned since we passed welfare reform in 1996. We learned that we have to make changes. We learned that we cannot send people to work and keep them in poverty forevermore. We learned that we have to do a better job in helping the families that need that safety net. In this economy with fewer jobs and a greater waiting list for child care, we know that we have a lot of work to do because people are returning to welfare in this bad economy. But the most important thing that we learned from 1996 is that it is not so hard to get people off welfare, but it is very hard to get them out of poverty. So if we want to keep individuals off the welfare rolls, particularly in a weaker economy, the economy we have today under President Bush, we have to work very hard; otherwise we have failed because welfare moms, those who have moved from welfare, have moved into permanent poverty. Today more than one-fifth of the families that have left welfare since 1996 have come back onto the rolls and 39 States have reported a greater caseload increase for the last quarter.”