Timothy Roemer: “this bill, this conference report that we will soon vote on, represents the biggest change to our social policy in the…”

“this bill, this conference report that we will soon vote on, represents the biggest change to our social policy in the last 60 years. We have moved from the New Deal to the New Frontier to the Great Society, and now hopefully to the fair deal. Where have we gone in this debate over the last year? We started with H.R. 4, a bill that I think was terrible for this Nation and for our children, that was mean to our children, that was unfair to the people that we wanted to give skills to go to work, that was not fair to our parents who had children home from child care. That bill has been vastly changed. Just recently we voted for a bill to come out of the House, and 30 of us Democrats voted to move the process along and improve the bill in the Senate and House conference, where it has been improved, and I will vote to support this conference. President Clinton deserves credit for his willingness to sign this bill, and he deserves praise for his determination to change previous bills that were mean to children and that did not give the resources to our workers to stay off welfare. Let us move forward in a bipartisan way to continue to modify what can be a better and better bill, through Executive order, through legislative change, and through bipartisan work.”