Sam Brownback: “I hope we will not stand here and say that the welfare program, the changes that we made in the last Congress have been…”

“I hope we will not stand here and say that the welfare program, the changes that we made in the last Congress have been a failure. They have been a great success. Look in my home State of Kansas where welfare rolls have gone down 30 percent. And, yes, we have had a strong economy, but in the past we have had a strong economy when the welfare rolls have gone up. You have to change the incentives in the program. That is what we did in the last Congress. It was a positive step to move forward. So I hope that we do not make something a failure when it has been a strong success and people are working now rather than receiving payments from the Government and they are having more self-confidence themselves. I think this is good for people, too, because with the past system the people on welfare, along with the people that paid for welfare, thought it was a horrible failure and a horrible system. We have changed the dynamics, and we have changed the incentives in this program to where the people are incentivized to work. And they feel good about it. They feel better about it. And this is a program that is going to work.”