Political Quotes

“I pose this question. There is a part in my recollection I am not certain about, but it seems that one of the criticisms to welfare reform, getting people off of welfare and putting them on work, 'workfare' we often called it, and there was significant success in some of the States. Wisconsin got a lot of publicity, I think, that launched Governor Tommy Thompson on a pretty successful path. Also, in my State we did a very good job and very successful working in conjunction with the policy established here out of Congress. But it is my recollection that a component in the master plan to succeed in welfare reform was that if you took people off welfare and they couldn't afford health insurance for their children, they would be more likely to stay on welfare and less likely to work. So that was one of the components of the psychology in creating the SCHIP program in the first place, dialed in at 200 percent of poverty.”