John Kline: “I have got a number of issues to address here. We've heard so much in a relatively short period of time here. We heard…”

“I have got a number of issues to address here. We've heard so much in a relatively short period of time here. We heard from some of our colleagues that we haven't brought a jobs bill. My colleagues on both sides of the aisle know very well that we have brought many jobs bills. In fact, over 30 of them have passed this House--most of them in a bipartisan way--and are sitting in the Senate. We just don't happen to believe that trillions more of borrowed money to jump-start the economy is a jobs bill. That's been proven to fail. This, in fact, is a jobs bill because we want people on welfare to get to work. And so we've heard that, no, this information memorandum, which has been now correctly determined to be a rule--an information memorandum designed to bypass Congress--will in fact weaken the work requirements. And so how do we draw that conclusion? From a number of things. One, we're very concerned about the definition of ``work.'' We've heard the number, 20 percent increase. It actually means instead of 1.5 percent of people leaving with a ``job'' that we still haven't quite defined, apparently, we'd have 1.8 percent. Not an overwhelming number. And then we have the nonpartisan, ever-present Congressional Budget Office that has joined us with this opinion. Under the memorandum: CBO expects the penalties for States that don't meet the work requirements specified in the Social Security Act would be reduced. It sounds like waiving work requirements to me.…”