Jack Kingston: “One of the things about welfare, in preparation for Father's Day I was doing some research and found out that police…”

“One of the things about welfare, in preparation for Father's Day I was doing some research and found out that police departments unfortunately use as an indicator of crime in the neighborhood, not the drug use and not the location or the geography but how many fathers live at home. Ninety-two percent of the children on welfare do not have a father at home. Those are the kids that do drop out of school, do have teenage pregnancy situations, do have violent crime and so forth. The fact was unbelievable, but it is that breakup of the family unit. Why is the dad not at home? Because we have a stupid, insane government policy that says if he stays at home, they get kicked out of the housing project because their income will make them ineligible. Does that make any sense? Would it not make sense to have a housing project where we have stable mom-and-dad relationships, where we can have some model citizens that other folks who live in the housing project can look up to? Does common sense not dictate that we do that? Instead, we have a Federal Government that says, ``No, dad, you are out of here. If you stay here, she is going to lose her benefits,'' and she cannot go out and find a job and get the benefits and the child care and the health insurance, and she needs that. I do not blame her.”