Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2012
Floor Speech
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Ms. FOXX. I thank my colleague from Wisconsin for the exceptional leadership he has been bringing to this House on this issue of the budget.
I want to say I agree with my colleague from Georgia. We are the greatest country in the world. We also have the smartest people in the world, and they're not going to buy this demagoguery anymore.
The President and Democratic political strategists are engaged in demagoguery of the worst sort. Yesterday the President accused us of wanting to leave sick kids to fend for themselves. But we've heard this before.
On the eve of the 1996 welfare reform, Senator Frank Lautenberg voiced his concern that the bill would transform America into a Third World nation leaving ``children hungry and homeless, begging for money, begging for food and even at 8 and 9 years old engaging in prostitution.''
Senator Carol Moseley-Braun trumped Lautenberg by wondering aloud whether the welfare reform bill would prompt the widespread auctioning of abandoned children into slavery. Jill Nelson of The Nation did them one better by predicting that ``working- and middle-class communities all over America will become scary, violent wastelands.'' Representative Jim McDermott made a more prosaic prediction that within 2 years of enactment, the bill would ``put 1.5 million to 2.5 million children into poverty.'' Even Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that the law would ``have children sleeping on grates.''
What happened? Child poverty rates fell by 1 percent per year in the 5 years following the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, and they remain below 1995 levels, even though the Nation is still emerging from a severe recession. Transforming welfare, by among other things block granting the program and giving States more control over its implementation, cut caseloads in half against a backdrop of falling poverty rates. In almost every particular, the critics were wrong.
The aim of the social safety net should be to empower individuals, putting them in stronger position to achieve. Government can play a positive role in this area with policies aimed at helping those who are down on their luck get back on their feet.
The Acting CHAIR. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.
Ms. FOXX. This budget strengthens the social safety net and promotes policies that help people recover from poverty and lead self-sufficient lives.
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