On the recordMarch 13, 2013
I think the real poverty at stake today is the poverty of cooperation, that of seeking a bipartisan response to poverty, a poverty of balance that contributes to the many children and their parents who are out there and who are seeing so little progress. If you evaluate the TANF program and how it has operated over the last decade and a half, based upon the number of poor people who have been denied assistance, it has been a tremendous success; but if you evaluate it based on how many poor people have moved out of welfare and into the workforce--into a job with a living wage that they're still in--I think the progress has been very spotty, at best. The responsibility for those failures is shared broadly here in Washington and in the States, many of which just used the TANF resources to replace other things they were doing in the social service area. I believe that today's attempt to restrict State authority to strengthen welfare to work initiatives is totally contradictory with what's going on right now in the Budget Committee on block granting health assistance. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has again expired.
