Cliff Stearns: “I would like to bring a little good news to the floor this morning on the subject of welfare reform. When the 1996…”

“I would like to bring a little good news to the floor this morning on the subject of welfare reform. When the 1996 welfare reform bill was debated in Congress, scholars across this country, legislators at the State and Federal level, in the Senate and the House alike, predicted that a welfare system which demanded work, imposed sanctions, and operated under time restrictions would result in huge declines in family income. One Member of Congress went so far as to say that the 1996 legislation was, quote, the most brutal act of social policy since reconstruction, end quote. Well, Mr. Speaker, we now have the benefit of time and we have the benefit of the U.S. Census Bureau data on family income and poverty for the year 2000, thereby allowing informed judgments in the debate on welfare reform and, of course, its benefits to the poor. This new data suggests great strides have been made since 1996. For the seventh year in a row, poverty is down. Even more, African American and Hispanic households had their lowest poverty rates ever. And the overall child poverty rate was lower than in any year since 1976. During the debate in 1996, the Urban Institute predicted that if this bill was enacted, the 1996 reforms would cast another 1 million children into poverty. Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, nearly 3 million children have been lifted out of poverty since 1996.”