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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, having a job gives individuals purpose and dignity. We should promote policies lifting people out of poverty.

In the 1990s, we passed welfare reform with a Republican Congress and a Democrat President. The results? Welfare rolls went down, poverty rates decreased, and employment and earnings increased.

Establishing work requirements in Medicaid for able-bodied adults with reasonable exemptions, then from the previous precedent of welfare reform--that all makes common sense yet today.

States like Iowa are already leading the way in establishing work requirements for able-bodied adults in Medicaid. Iowa's Governor Reynolds has said:

If you are an able-bodied adult who can work, you should work.

We are doing the same thing at the national level.

Work requirements under the One Big Beautiful Bill only apply to able-bodied adults between the ages of 19 and 64. Individuals will have to complete a minimum of 80 hours of work a month, or about 20 hours a week, of qualifying community engagement activities like working, job training, going to school, volunteering, or a combination of all these.

We have reasonable exemptions for veterans with a disability rated as total, individuals who are medically frail or otherwise have special medical needs, individuals who are blind, have a substance use disorder, a disabling mental disorder, a physical or intellect disability that significantly impairs their ability to perform one or more activities of daily living, or serious or complex medical conditions.

We also have exemptions for parents, guardians, and caretaker relatives of children aged 14 or under or disabled individuals and foster care youth through the age of 26.

We give ``good cause'' exemptions for short-term hardships like hospitalizations or for an individual receiving psychiatric care. Individuals impacted by a natural disaster, living in a high- unemployment area, or having to travel outside their community for an extended period of time to receive medical service would also be exempted.

States will obviously be required to establish streamlined processes and use reliable data, like payroll data, to avoid individuals submitting their own documentation. There will also be significant outreach and education to those who will be required to work.

Labor force participation data for prime-age men--25 to 54--indicates that between 1950 to 1970, less than 1 in 30 was out of the labor force. Now--maybe it shouldn't be surprising--since then, participation declined steadily, so that 1 in 30 figure is now 1 in 10. This represents nearly 7 million prime-age men absent from the workforce.

On top of this, recent research found that nonworking Medicaid recipients spend 6 hours a day on socializing, relaxing, TV, and video games. They spend 125 hours during a 30-day month watching TV and video games alone. That is more than 50 percent higher than the 80 hours they would be required to work in a month.

Commonsense Medicaid work requirements for able-bodied adults take the same approach as welfare reform did in the 1990s--move people from welfare to work and self-sufficiency. The contrary--being on government programs--is a life of poverty. If you want to get out of poverty, you have to be in the world of work, and that is what we are trying to accomplish through this legislation, just like we do work requirements for every other government program.

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