Preventing Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in Tanf Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for yielding. I want to say to my colleagues, my Republican friends, that I agree with them that the way this program, TANF, was designed, it was a fraudster's dream.

It was designed with so-called flexibility, and the reason I know that is because I was in the Wisconsin State Senate when ``ending welfare as we know it'' was constructed by Tommy G. Thompson, then- Governor of the State of Wisconsin, and it was adopted the following year by Newt Gingrich and President Clinton.

It was designed that way. It was not just since poor Brett Favre, the Wisconsin quarterback, built the volleyball court with TANF dollars, poor thing getting blamed for it.

Before then, States were balancing their budgets with TANF money; cities were building infrastructure projects with TANF dollars; and CEOs who ran the welfare programs in our States were getting bonuses for denying welfare recipients benefits. This didn't just start.

I agree that we should rein in waste, fraud, and abuse with the provisions provided by Dr. Danny Davis and Dr. Judy Chu's bill. This bill doesn't do that at all.

All it does is provide HHS with the power to stop providing support for women and children who need daycare, to be able to do what they did earlier this year, and to freeze $10 billion to blue States. This is all that this does. This does not get at the heart of the problem.

Madam Speaker, I ask our colleagues to vote against this bill, to come together with Dr. Davis and Ms. Chu and the rest of us who want to end the true source of waste, fraud, and abuse, and not abuse our children with this provision.

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