James M. Talent: “I knew from the beginning of the session that there would be a series of attempts through the back door... to gut the…”

“I knew from the beginning of the session that there would be a series of attempts through the back door... to gut the work provisions in the welfare bill that we passed last year on a bipartisan basis, and that the President signed and that is working in the United States of America and reducing welfare caseloads around the country, getting people off dependency and to work. And there have been a series of attempts to do that in committee, on the Senate floor, and now unfortunately in this motion to instruct. Now, Mr. Speaker, the motion to instruct contains, I think, a good provision telling us that we should not, at this time anyway, increase the retirement age for Medicare from 65 to 67. I support that, and I am going to support the motion to instruct for that reason. But attached to it is one of those back-door attacks on the work provisions in the welfare bill. The whole point of the work provisions that we passed last year was to require work in exchange for welfare benefits and therefore to make work attractive vis-a-vis welfare, so that we would encourage people to get work skills and to get off welfare and into work, and it is working.”