James M. Talent: “the hour is getting late. I am going to take a few minutes of the Senate's time to talk a little bit about welfare…”

“the hour is getting late. I am going to take a few minutes of the Senate's time to talk a little bit about welfare reform. It is a subject that has been close to my heart for a long time. I was a freshman in the House when I introduced, along with then-Congressman Tim Hutchinson who subsequently served in this body, what we called the real welfare reform act. The idea behind that bill was to stop talking about welfare reform in terms of whether we could save money or whether we could stop fraud in the welfare system and start talking about what was really at stake, which was replacing a system that had punished work, that had discouraged marriage, that had torn down neighborhoods, and had mired people in despair and replaced it with a system that encouraged work for able-bodied people, required it in some cases, that supported community-based solutions, and built up neighborhoods. We talked about that bill for several years. Welfare reform gained steam. There were some who opposed it the whole time, who fought a last ditch effort on behalf of the status quo; a pretty lousy status quo it was, too. But eventually we passed the bill by very large majorities in both Houses. President Clinton signed it. There were predictions of doom. It has turned out to be--I guess now by consensus--the most successful legislation of the 1990s, and the most significant social reform passed in the last generation in this Congress.”