Government Funding
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is one of the most basic questions that we get in almost any setting: What do you do? It is common conversation, back and forth between adults or teenagers or college students alike: What do you do?
It is a philosophical issue, though, that really has to be addressed, and, interestingly enough, it has become a greater divide between Republicans and Democrats of late. It didn't used to be that way.
The simple conversation about ``what do you do'' and encouraging people to be able to be engaged in productive work and what they do seemed to be something that was unified.
Democrats and Republicans alike rallied in the 1990s, as Bill Clinton declared: We are ending welfare as we know it. A 60-year experiment of sending out checks to individuals, saying we are going to help people escape poverty by sending a check to individuals, and if we give them a check, they will rise out of poverty.
Bill Clinton stood before the Nation and said: I campaigned to end that because that experiment didn't work, and he focused in a whole different direction, encouraging, as he spoke often on deadbeat dads, individuals that should pay their child support, need to pay it, and he highlighted how many people weren't doing that because those families were left exposed.
And he talked about the dignity of work, saying: To help people to be able to escape from poverty, we need to incentivize work and stop just sending a check to individuals but instead attach that to work.
The Nation stood and cheered and rallied around a moment to say: Let's help people, but let's help people actually rise.
There is a statement that I heard often, even during that time period: Let's not make welfare a hammock; let's make it a trampoline, that they can get assistance for a moment and be lifted out and to be able to rise to other things.
I thought that was a settled issue, until just last year. I suddenly started hearing President Biden on the campaign trail, and now in office, with my Democratic colleagues in the House already passing something over there in their committees, saying: We want to actually go back to welfare as we knew it. We want to be able to go back to that failed experiment, when we used to just mail checks to people, and so people in government would feel good to say: We took care of childhood poverty.
I have already heard people--even today in this body--say: If we pass this $3\1/2\ trillion proposal, we will cut childhood poverty in half. That was a statement that was made pre-1990s, when government believed if I just mailed a check, suddenly children would rise out of poverty because the numbers are right. But, actually, what we discovered was inflation would rise as checks were mailed out, and families were trapped in permanent levels of poverty because there was a disincentive to actually engage in work.
Now, again, this used to not be a Republican-Democrat thing. This was just a thing that we could look at the data.
Brookings Institute, which is a left-leaning think tank--I think we could all commonly agree with that. The Brookings Institute has, year after year, gone back to be able to look at how people actually escape poverty. How does it happen? What are the features that are there if people--if it is true in their life that they escaped poverty. They have identified three areas; that if these three areas are true, you will escape poverty.
No. 1, graduate high school. People that graduate high school, much lower level. No. 2, have a full-time job; have an income; if you actually are working full time. And, No. 3, if you wait until 21 to be married and then have children after marriage.
If those three things are true, the Brookings Institute said only 2 percent of the people actually are in poverty. Seventy-five percent of those folks in poverty that graduate high school, get a full-time job, have children after marriage--if those three things are true, 75 percent of them rise into the middle class.
This is not rocket science in some ways; it is just human nature. But the bill that is being set in front of us that is $3\1/2\ trillion in entitlements--and just to be able to put in perspective how large that is, if you combined the budgets of all 50 States, the total budget of all 50 States, it is $2 trillion. This new entitlement bill is $3\1/2\ trillion that is being proposed--$3\1/2\ trillion of new entitlements that would go to individuals that removes things like an incentive to work. It says you can get childcare tax credits, even if you are not working; that no matter if you are working or not--and the current limit, by the way, don't forget, is only $2,500 of income in a year. If you will do at least $2,500 worth of income in a year, then you get additional assistance. It is the encouragement to say the State will come alongside of you, but we have got to help you to be able to rise out of this spot--even that is taken away.
There is a marriage penalty that is included in this. Ironically, when I read from the Brookings Institute, and they say, ``Do you want to help people rise out of poverty,'' there is actually a marriage penalty in this where it actually punishes.
So we seem to be punishing work and punishing marriage rather than encouraging people to be able to rise.
Listen, this statement should be common for us: What do you do? It is not just meaningful for individuals and for communities, it is meaningful for children because, in school, children will be asked: What do your parents do? And if it is nothing, it matters to a child. A child has the example that is set in front of them, and it becomes a generational issue. We should encourage each generation to be able to rise and be a part of our society, not to be disconnected but to be engaged with all of our society. That develops community between individuals. It helps our economy to grow. It is what made us the most powerful economy in the entire world because we had what we called the American work ethic.
The American work ethic was a very simple principle that everyone should have the opportunity to be able to do whatever job they choose to be able to do, to be able to have access to the economy.
And if we find any individual or any group that is blocked out of the economy, government steps in and clears the path to make sure there is a level path to be able to be engaged so that everyone has that option to be able to engage in the economy; that everyone has the chance to be able to rise.
That does not get better by telling people: Oh, sit down. You don't have to work. Oh, sit down right over there. We will take care of all your kids all the way through. You don't have to engage.
It sounds nice unless you are living in it. And then it traps people in generational poverty--urban, rural, across the country. It traps people in generational poverty. That doesn't help families. That doesn't help children. That doesn't bless families and help them to be able to rise out of poverty. It keeps them trapped in it.
We have a philosophical difference. How do we help people in poverty? I believe we help people in poverty by clearing out of every opportunity and making straight level paths, setting that in front of individuals and saying: You are an American. Go after the American dream. Apply the American work ethic: try, graduate high school, get a job, get married, stay engaged, bless your children. I believe that is the best way to be able to help our Nation.
Apparently, others believe that it is better just to be able to say: No. You can't do it. Sit down. I will send you a check.
I don't think that casts a vision for their children, and I don't think that helps our Nation.
If you want to make it very straightforward and simple, the census said that we have 21 million children who have a parent that lived outside the household in 2018. Thirty percent of those children were in poverty--three times the rate of children in households where both parents were present.
I could read the Brookings. I can read the census data. But I think we all know it in our gut; that we provide purpose and meaning to people when they can answer the question: What do you do, and it matters to our country and to them as a family.
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