Political Quotes

“If I can finish--that is what the Senator's amendment does. It focuses in on the problem areas. It says, if you cannot find day care, and if you can show that day care is unavailable, whether it is just too costly, given the amount of money you receive on welfare, or it is not proximate to where you live, or whatever the case may be-- and there is a laundry list of things that you can use to show the unavailability of day care--under the Snowe amendment that is included in the Dole package now, if you can show that day care is unavailable, you are exempted from the work requirements. That is a very important measure. Because what that does is it says to the State--which, I remind you, has to have, when this program is finally phased in, half of the people in the program in the work program. Those people who cannot find day care remain in the denominator but not in the numerator. So they are part of the base of 100 percent, but they do not go toward the 50 percent you need for work participation. If you have a sufficient lack of day care, that is going to have a big effect on your ability to meet your 50 percent work participation standards. We believe that will be adequate impetus, in fact more than adequate impetus, to get the States to provide day-care services that are necessary to get younger mothers, in particular, into the workplace.”