Political Quotes

“Tonight I want to talk about what I consider the most critical aspect of welfare reform and that is individual responsibility. Welfare reform must reconnect recipients to the world of work and reestablish the traditional American values of work, family, individual responsibility, and opportunity. In exchange for transitional support in search of a job, en route to a job, recipients must assume personal responsibility on their part and their end of the contract, finding a job, getting job training, and in other ways working themselves off the welfare rolls. As part of that contract, we must change the culture of welfare, and to those who administer it today, as just a way to qualify for income maintenance, to job placement; a reform system must reward work and encourage two-parent families. It should also provide incentives to young people to make better choices with regard to parenting and getting an education. It also needs to have stiff enforcement for fathers who neglect child support payments. Welfare must be a hand up, not a handout, and, therefore, it must be an invitation to join the American work force, to break out of the cycle of poverty and despair and offer hope for the future. It can work. I have personally seen successful projects in California, Wisconsin, Indiana, and my own State of Oklahoma.”