John Kerry: “Mr. President, as we trudge toward the rhetorical goal of ending welfare as we know it, we as a country must do better…”

“Mr. President, as we trudge toward the rhetorical goal of ending welfare as we know it, we as a country must do better; we must embrace whole new ideas of how to accomplish this--if not now, at least in the future--primarily by investing in impoverished children and secondarily by providing a safety net for their parents. The guiding principle of our new system should be to summon the very best effort this country can mount to enable children who are victims of poverty to become self-sufficient adults capable of contributing to our society in a positive way and leading happy, fulfilling lives. Dependency--whether it be on the foster care system when a person is a child, or on Government institutions such as the welfare or criminal justice systems if a person is an adult, or on drugs at any age--is a tragic waste of human potential and imposes costs we as a nation need not suffer and cannot afford to pay. In many ways, welfare works--it is perhaps the cheapest means of getting the bare minimum of resources to the neediest slice of the American public; but in critical ways, it does not--it can perpetuate dependency rather than inculcate self-sufficiency.”