Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. WESTERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the diligent work on the
Budget Committee and the leadership you have shown there.

Mr. Chairman, Americans know that this country was built on a strong
work ethic. This budget provides a framework to create work
requirements for able-bodied, working-age adults receiving Federal
benefits.

Some may ask, Why work requirements? In 1996, President Clinton, a
fellow Arkansan from my hometown of Hot Springs but from across the
aisle, said: Today we are taking an historic chance to make welfare
what it is meant to be: a second chance, not a way of life. The goal of
workforce requirements on able-bodied, working-age adults is simply to
give Americans a hand up, not a hand out.

Mr. Chairman, we should be concerned about the negative effects these
Federal benefit programs are having on our American work ethic when we
review the data. The maximum an individual can earn and still receive
government assistance under some programs, according to the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, is only $1,000.

The Cato Institute reports that in 39 States, individuals can make
more on government assistance than by working an 8-hour, $8-per-hour
job. In six States, government benefits pay more than a $12-per-hour
job; and in eight States, government assistance pays for more than the
average salary of an American teacher.

In my home State, where Medicaid expansion was accepted, 40 percent
of the able-bodied, working-age adults receiving 100-percent-funded
Medicaid had zero income. By adding workforce requirements for able-
bodied, working-age adults in the Medicaid population alone, this
budget establishes a blueprint for work requirements that will result
in savings by 2022 of up to $376 billion federally, with an additional
$170 billion saved at the State level.

President Franklin Roosevelt made clear during a 1935 address to
Congress that these programs were not intended to be an entitlement but
a temporary aid to those in need. He said:

``The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately
before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief
induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive
to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer
a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to
the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of
America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.''

The principles President Clinton and President Roosevelt before him
promoted are more important now than ever before as we find ourselves
in a fiscal crisis created by dependence and entitlement. President
Clinton reminded us in 1996 that this is not the end of welfare reform,
this is the beginning, and we all have to assume responsibility.

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Mr. WESTERMAN. This budget incentivizes work, not dependence. This
budget reduces spending growth instead of growing government. This
budget moves us in the right direction.

I encourage my friends on both sides of the aisle to assume
responsibility by voting for this balanced budget for a stronger,
working America.

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