Political Quotes

“What I think is important in this whole debate is an understanding that the work requirement provision in the bill is not a penalty, it is an opportunity. It is an opportunity for people who have not had the chance to go out to find work, in many cases to be placed in a work program so they can go out and be productive and learn skills and, in many cases, because you have people who have never had jobs before, they can learn what it is to get up in the morning and get their children ready for day care, or for someone else to come into the house, and get yourself to a work site, work an 8-hour day, and get home and again provide for their children. That is an experience that, unfortunately, many people in our society have not experienced. That is a very valuable one. I add that it is something many people in our society have never seen a parent do. They have no idea what it means to grow up in a house where they never saw that happen. So it is important that we provide to everyone the opportunity to work and that we require it, in a sense, and that we say that this is a temporary program; this is not a program that is going to go on and on. Welfare is not a maintenance system where we provide for people in poverty for indefinite periods of time, but it is a dynamic transitional program that prepares people to get from a position where they cannot work, or they are not prepared to work, to a position where they will and do work.”