Political Quotes

“after listening to some of the debate on amendments that are being offered and having the opportunity to come to the floor and defend what we did last year on the welfare reform bill, you would think by all of the amendments that are being discussed and by all of the gnashing of teeth that is going on here in the U.S. Senate today, that we have a welfare reform bill--the bill that passed this Congress last session and implemented by the States' 50 Governors--that we are having an abject failure; that horrible things are happening out there in the area of welfare that we have to now come back and save all of these people. I hate to disappoint anybody's party here. But the fact of the matter is that things are not all that bad. In fact, things are doing very, very well in the area of welfare. I will point to a couple of things as illustrations. First, I have not seen one major newspaper write one bad article or editorial on the devastating effects of welfare reform passed by the last Congress. I assure you that if there were any devastating stories to be told, they would be telling them because of all these papers that were against the welfare reform bill that went through. The fact that we have not heard of horror stories and that we have not heard any gnashing of teeth from the media about what is going on is certainly a positive sign that things are actually going well.”