Zoe Lofgren: “I, until this Congress, was a member of the local government that had responsibility for administering the welfare…”

“I, until this Congress, was a member of the local government that had responsibility for administering the welfare program, and I felt, coming here, that there were a lot changes I want to make. There is no doubt that a lot of things need to be fixed in welfare programs in this country. We need to put people back to work, we need to have expectations for work, we need to pay attention to child care, we need to change the whole system. But what concerns me is that once again the bill that we will deal with goes too far. As you know, I think, and I want to talk about legal immigrants, not illegal immigrants because they are eligible for nothing and should be eligible for nothing, but I want to talk about what is fair to taxpayers, and I will give my colleagues a couple of examples. In my district there are large numbers of Vietnamese freedom fighters, people who fought communism who came to this country as originally refugees, ultimately became residents, and under the bill before us, if after paying taxes for years and years and years, 14 years, they get a stroke, they cannot get nursing home coverage. Let me talk about another example. An immigrant who comes in with her husband, and her husband works for 50 years and dies, and then as she is an old person, she is 65, she has a stroke, and she is not eligible to get the kind of nursing home care that the widow of every other taxpayer in America can look to get. Now, I do not think that is fair.”