Political Quotes

“there is virtually universal agreement that our current welfare system is broken and must be dramatically overhauled. Americans are a compassionate people, eager to lend a helping hand to hard workers experiencing temporary difficulties and especially to children who are victims of circumstances beyond their control. But Americans also are a just people, expecting everyone to contribute as they are able and to take responsibility for themselves and their families. It is the balancing of these two concerns that makes correcting our welfare system a challenge, but a challenge which must be met. This welfare reform conference report is far from perfect, but it clearly is preferable to continuing the current system and preferable to welfare legislation considered earlier this Congress. For these reasons, we support the welfare reform conference report and have encouraged the President to sign it. We have opposed previous welfare reform proposals because we believed that they offered empty, unsustainable promises of moving welfare recipients to work. Additionally, earlier bills were seriously deficient in their protections for children and other truly vulnerable populations. We have decided to support this final conference report because it is considerably better than the welfare reform bill (H.R. 4) appropriately vetoed by the President last year and it also makes significant improvements to the bill passed by the House last week.”