Carrie Meek: “But the easy part of welfare reform is figuring out where you want to go. The hardest part is figuring out to get there.…”

“But the easy part of welfare reform is figuring out where you want to go. The hardest part is figuring out to get there. That is what we are here for this evening. We all know, including welfare mothers, that every proposal that is serious costs money. I have been through the alphabet machine in all of these welfare programs and acronyms over the years. I have yet to see one that works to get the women off welfare. Unless we prepare ourselves to do things differently and better, then we are not making sense providing rhetoric for the welfare program. I want to make it clear that when it comes to welfare, race and ethnicity are both immaterial. Thirty-eight percent of families receiving welfare payments are African-Americans, but 38 percent of families receiving welfare payments are also non-Hispanic Caucasians, and 17 percent of these families are Hispanic-Americans. Mr. Speaker, Poverty is an equal opportunity problem in America. No single group has a majority or a monopoly. To me the worst thing about our welfare system is that it is wasteful.”