Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I believe in the value of work. That's one of the reasons that I voted for the 1996 welfare reform law, because I wanted to see more people move from welfare to work. Our laws need to encourage job opportunities, but in the effort that we have before us today, it seems to me that this legislation as proposed is less malevolent and more irrelevant to those poor people. Because of the way the TANF program is currently structured, only about 1 percent of working-aged adults across America who are poor are participating in TANF work activities at any particular time. So, this afternoon, for 99 percent of the poor Americans who are not participating in TANF work activities, this bill is not all that significant. These are people who are struggling to get up the economic ladder at about the first rung. What happens and whether there are waivers or there are not waivers, I think they basically just feel that we've waved good-bye to their plight and are not responding to it in a constructive way. It also is important to remember that we have a higher proportion of our population living near the bottom of the economic ladder today than when welfare reform was first enacted. In 2011, about 46 million American neighbors lived in poverty. About 350,000 of those lived in the San Antonio area.…”