Jack Kingston: “As my colleagues know now, one of the root causes of the crime problem, the explosion of crime particularly in the inner…”

“As my colleagues know now, one of the root causes of the crime problem, the explosion of crime particularly in the inner city, is the breakdown of the family. The previous speaker mentioned that there were 15 million children being raised in single parent homes. Actually there is 15 million being raised in homes generally without fathers. Now of the children on AFDC or basically on welfare, 92 percent live in a home where they do not have fathers, and that is homes really where small children are being raised by teenagers. We are talking 17-year-old mamas raising kids and often on top of going to high school, and sometimes a 17-year-old is raising two children. There was a study that said one of the biggest co-relationships between crime in the neighborhood is an education. It is not poverty. It is just having fathers at home, and one of the key elements of the Contract With America's reform plan is to reunite that family saying that if you are under 18 years old, you have got to identify the father, and I will mention that a little bit more later, but also you got to stay at home with your own parent in order to get that welfare check, and I think that will help strengthen the family unit which has been broken down really because of Government policy.”