NAN A. S. HAYWORTH: “our President speaks often about changing the tone in Washington. To help him do that, we, with commonsense control of…”

“our President speaks often about changing the tone in Washington. To help him do that, we, with commonsense control of the Congress, were able to change some policies in Washington. For the better part of a half century, the Federal Government evaluated success by the number of people who were added to the welfare rolls. We said, that has fundamentally got to change, that true compassion is making sure people find jobs, that at the end of the day when all is said and done, the best social program for any American is a job. Welfare reform, enacted over a half decade ago, has put us on the road to that commonsense measure, where the real measure of compassion is the number of people who leave the welfare rolls and find work, where honest compassion is providing educational opportunity and child care opportunities to enable people to leave welfare and go to work. And despite some of the mean-spirited catcalls of over a half decade ago about children being thrown into the streets and all sorts of other things that I will not repeat because they are so beneath the dignity of this House, we have restored the basic dignity to millions of Americans who now derive satisfaction from a day's work and a day's pay. We need to continue this battle and continue welfare reform. I ask my colleagues to join with me on a bipartisan basis with that type of vote today in this House in favor of continuing commonsense welfare reform.”