Kendrick Meek: “when welfare reform was passed, Congress gave very little guidance to States for determining the applicability of…”

“when welfare reform was passed, Congress gave very little guidance to States for determining the applicability of existing employment laws to welfare recipients. This meant that States, counties, employers could use any kind of guideline in applying the welfare reform laws. We all are in agreement, there should have been some reform of welfare. The time had come for that. But the time will never come when we take away some of the employment benefits from the Federal Government that every citizen of this country needs and desires and really should be given. Congress never said that the Fair Labor Standards Act, which includes the minimum wage provisions, should not be applied to welfare recipients. Neither did they say it should be applied. So those were questions that were left open. Each time this piece of legislation came to the floor, I questioned those things. I questioned because of the fact that the Federal Government, which has been sort of the person or the group of people who looked over these laws to be sure that everybody got fair treatment, equal treatment under the law, but with the Welfare Reform Act nothing was mentioned.”