Timothy Roemer: “I am proud to have voted for a successful bipartisan welfare reform in 1996. That bill has worked to get people off of…”

“I am proud to have voted for a successful bipartisan welfare reform in 1996. That bill has worked to get people off of welfare roles into work, and many of them out of poverty. Now we have a Republican bill that is coming to the floor later today that threatens that very success because it omits three important things. One, instead of emphasizing work it emphasizes simply knocking people off the welfare roles. We want to give a credit to States to get people into jobs, not just off welfare. Secondly, we need to emphasize child care. I support more work for welfare families. If they are going to work more, their children are going to need more child care. We have 12,757 children on the waiting list today in Indiana for child care. Thirdly, we emphasized mothers, single mothers and welfare reform in 1996. We largely left out fathers. We should be able to offer an amendment to make fathers, noncustodial parents get back into the workplace. Let us work with that much maligned body on the other side to get real reform that continues the bipartisan success of 1996.”