Welfare state

“ But we can all agree that we must meet the challenge, not by pouring more money into a bad program, but by abolishing the present welfare system and adopting a new one.
So let us place a floor under the income of every family with children in America--and without those demeaning, soul-stifling affronts to human dignity that so blight the lives of welfare children today. But let us also establish an effective work incentive and an effective work requirement. ”

“ We have slashed this redtape to 37 States, covering 75 percent of all the people on welfare in America, so that they can take steps to fix the broken system. State by State, we are building a welfare system that demands work, requires responsibility, and protects our children. ”

“ First, we cannot delay longer in accomplishing a total reform of our welfare system. When a system penalizes work, breaks up homes, robs recipients of dignity, there is no alternative to abolishing that system and adopting in its place the program of income support, job training, and work incentives which I recommended to the Congress last year. ”

“ I say to those who are on welfare, and especially to those who have been trapped on welfare for a long time: For too long our welfare system has undermined the values of family and work, instead of supporting them. The Congress and I are near agreement on sweeping welfare reform. ”

“ I appeal to the candor of the honorable gentleman, and if he thinks it an improper appeal, I ask the gentlemen here, whether there be a general, indefinite power of providing for the general welfare? The power is, "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare;" so that they can only raise money by these means, in order to provide for the general welfare. No man who reads it can sav it is general, as the honorable gentleman represents it. ”

“ So in the last 3 years, my administration has granted 38 States welfare reform waivers, clearing away Federal rules and regulations to permit States to build effective welfare reforms of their own. The State-based reform we've encouraged has brought work and responsibilityback to the lives of 75 percent of the Americans on welfare. ”

“ They've demonstrated that successful welfare programs can be built around more effective child support enforcement practices and innovative programs requiring welfare recipients to work or prepare for work. Let us give the States more flexibility and encourage more reforms. Let's start making our welfare system the first rung on America's ladder of opportunity, a boost up from dependency, not a graveyard but a birthplace of hope. ”

“ Today I challenge every State to take the money they save from lowering their caseloads and use it—for child care, for transportation, to subsidize the training and wage help that people need to move from welfare to work. ”

“ To help those least fortunate of all, I am recommending a new public welfare program, stressing services instead of support, rehabilitation instead of relief, and training for useful work instead of prolonged dependency. ”

“ More must be done to reduce poverty and dependency and, believe me, nothing is more important than welfare reform. It's now common knowledge that our welfare system has itself become a poverty trap-a creator and reinforcer of dependency-and that's why last year, in my State of the Union Message, I called for an overhaul of our welfare system. ”

“ Tax credits and other incentives for businesses that hire people off welfare; Incentives for job placement firms in states to create more jobs for welfare recipients; Training, transportation and child care to help people go to work. Now I challenge every state--turn those welfare checks into private sector paychecks. I challenge every religious congregation, every community nonprofit, every business to hire someone off welfare. And I'd like to say especially to every employer in our country who ever criticized the old welfare system, you can't blame that old system anymore ”

“ But we have a moral obligation to do that through welfare reform, working together in our communities, our businesses, our churches and our schools. Every organization which employs people should consider hiring someone off welfare, and every state ought to give those organizations the incentives to do so, so that we can help families reclaim the right to know they can take care of themselves and their own obligations. ”

“ Within the framework of our present welfare system, my reform proposals offer achievable means to increase self-sufficiency through work rather than welfare, more adequate assistance to people unable to work, the removal of inequities in coverage under current programs, and fiscal relief needed by States and localities.
Our current welfare system is long overdue for serious reform; the system is wasteful and not fully effective. ”

“ We still have a lot more to do — all of us — to make welfare reform a success. Providing child care, helping families move closer to available jobs, challenging more companies to join our welfare-to- work partnership, increasing child support collections from deadbeat parents who have a duty to support their own children. ”

“ I once had a hearing when I was a Governor, and I brought in people on welfare from all over America who had found their way to work. The woman from my State who testified was asked this question: What's the best thing about being off welfare and in a job? And without blinking an eye, she looked at 40 Governors, and she said, "When my boy goes to school and they say what does you mother do for a living, he can give an answer." These people want a better system, and we ought to give it to them. ”

“ This spring I will send you a comprehensive welfare reform bill that builds on the Family Support Act of 1988 and restores the basic values of work and responsibility. We will say to teenagers if you have a child out of wedlock, we'll no longer give you a check to set up a separate household, we want families to stay together; say to absent parents who aren't paying their child support if you're not providing for your children we'll garnish your wages, suspend your license, track you across state lines, and if necessary make some of you work off what you owe. ”

“ In my State of the Union Address, I directed our administration to study the welfare system with a keen eye to making reforms. We already have in place a low-income assistance working group, which is hard at its task. ”

“ The national welfare, as understood by Congress, may require a different attitude within its sphere from that of some self-seeking State. It seems to me entirely constitutional for Congress to enforce its understanding by all the means at its command. ”

“ There are plenty of questions about which honest men can and do differ very greatly and very intensely, but as to which the triumph of either side may be compatible with the welfare of the State—a lesser degree of welfare or a greater degree of welfare—but compatible with the welfare of the State. ”

“ But whereas in earlier years our social welfare program was taken cynically as synonymous with hopelessness and failure, today it is looked on by a con­siderable segment of our people as the promise of a new life. ”

“ It is within our local communities that the real contribution to the welfare of our citizens is made. Those closest to the problem-the social workers in State and local governments, area agencies, and private and voluntary organizations-are usually the most qualified persons to decide what help is needed and the best way to provide it. ”

“ It is one thing to say that it would be desirable for the state to assume the indefinite care of a particular person, it is quite another thing to say that it would be advisable for the state to assume that care immediately, when one remembers the crowded condition of the institutions, the necessity of caring for the worst cases first, the possibility of the person being cared for by his own family or in a local school, the added public expense, the necessary neglect of other movements for social welfare if society assumes this expense, etc., etc. ”

“ I worked on this problem for years before I became President, with other Governors and with Members of Congress of both parties and with the previous administration of another party. I worked on it with people who were on welfare, lots of them. And I want to say something to everybody here who cares about this issue. The people who most want to change this system are the people who are dependent on it. They want to get off welfare. They want to go back to work. They want to do right by their kids. ”

“ About one million and a half of these belong to the group which in the past was dependent upon local welfare efforts. Most of them are unable for one reason or another to maintain themselves independently--for the most part, through no fault of their own. Such people, in the days before the great depression, were cared for by local efforts--by States, by counties, by towns, by cities, by churches and by private welfare agencies. ”

“ No one is more eager to end welfare— [applause] —I may be the only President who has actually had the opportunity to sit in a welfare office, who's actually spent hours and hours talking to people on welfare. ”

“ To be sure, the cases cited, and many others enunciating this fundamental standard under the Equal Protection Clause, have in the main involved state regulation of business or industry. The administration of public welfare assistance, by contrast, involves the most basic economic needs of impoverished human beings. ”

“ With these considerations in mind, the Administration will present its recommendations for further expansion of coverage and other steps which can be taken wisely at this time.
Other needs in the area of social welfare include increased child welfare services, extension of the program of aid to dependent children, intensified attack on juvenile delinquency, and special attention to the problems of mentally retarded children. The training of more skilled workers for these fields and the quest for new knowledge through research in social welfare are essential. ”

“ The people, whose welfare is the reason for the existence of the State, is also its most important resource. To promote this welfare and to sustain this resource, we have greatly expanded our health programs, especially where it is most needed—in the rural areas. ”

“ Price security, we are told, is only a special form of sanitary security; the economic motive is secondary and subordinate; the state intervenes to make its inhabitants healthy, and not to make them rich. On that assumption we are asked to say that intervention will be upheld as a valid exercise by the state of its internal police power, though there is an incidental obstruction to commerce between one state and another. This would be to eat up the rule under the guise of an exception. Economic welfare is always related to health, for there can be no health if men are starving. ”

“ Officers discharge their duties, arrests are made, courts are held, offenders are punished, justice is meted out, and taxes are collected, by the authority of the State.
The National Government has similar functions to perform in every part of the country, but they are far less frequent than those of the State.
INSTITUTIONS.--The State maintains a number of charitable and other institutions for the public welfare. It makes appropriations of land or money for the support of asylums, prisons, reformatories, scientific institutions, schools, colleges, and universities. ”

“ And this is an everlasting reason why the welfare of citizens cannot rightly be sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the State; but 397 why, on the other hand, the State is to be maintained solely for the benefit of citizens. ”

“ We must see that there is civic honesty, civic cleanliness, civic good sense in our home administration of city, State, and nation. We must strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward the creditors of the nation and of the individual; for the widest freedom of individual initiative where possible, and for the wisest control of individual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare of the many. But because we set our own household in order we are not thereby excused from playing our part in the great affairs of the world. ”

“ The welfare work of the District of Columbia is administered by several different boards dealing with charities and various correctional efforts. It would be an improvement if this work were consolidated and placed under the direction of a single commission. ”

“ The American people need a welfare system that honors American values: work, family, and personal responsibility. In 1994, and again this year, I sent Congress a sweeping welfare reform plan that would impose strict time limits on how long people can stay on welfare and strict work requirements for people when they are on welfare. ”

“ As of July 1st, just a few days ago, welfare reform has taken effect in all 50 States. This week the old welfare system came to an end. Now a new system based on work is taking its place. This system demands responsibility, but not only from the people who are now required to work but also from every American. ”

“ Second, the new regulation makes it easier for States to use their welfare block grant to pay for child care, for transportation, for job retention services, to help people who have left welfare stay off the rolls and help families from going on welfare in the first place. ”

“ For the last 3 years, we have been working hard to turn the welfare system around. All across America the welfare rolls are down, food stamp rolls are down, teen pregnancy rates are down compared to 4 years ago. And compared to 4 years ago, more and more people on welfare today are working as a condition of receiving welfare. ”