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House Journal: Page 1891: Tuesday, April 25, 1995

 deal, or it may not. you have to decide. But when we wanted to
cut the Agriculture Department budget - we're closing nearly
1,200 offices, we're reducing employment by 13,000, we
eliminated 14 divisions in the Department of Agriculture - my
own view is, that is better than putting an arbitrary cap on the
school lunch program, which will be terribly unfair to the
number - to the numerous school districts in this country that
have increasing burdens from low income children. There are a
lot of kids in this country - a lot of kids - the only decent
meal they get every day is the meal they get at school. This
program works. If it's not broke, we shouldn't fix it. So I
don't agree with that. But you have to decide.  
Welfare reform. I've already said, we have now given more
welfare reform waivers to states to get out from under the
federal government than were given in the last 12 years put
together. In two years, we've given more than 12 years. I am for
you figuring out how you want to run your welfare system and
move people from welfare to work. I am for that.
But here are the questions. Number one, should we have
cumbersome federal rules that say you have to penalize teenage
girls who give birth to children and cut them off? I don't think
so. We should never punish children for the mistakes of their
parents. And these children who become parents prematurely, we
should say, you made a mistake, you shouldn't do that - no child
should do that. But what we're going to do is impose
responsibilities on you for the future, to make you a
responsible parent, a responsible student, a responsible worker.
That's what your program does. Why should the federal government
tell you that you have to punish children, when what you really
want to do is move people from welfare to work so that more
people are good parents and good workers. You should decide
that. We do not need to be giving you lectures about how you
have to punish the kids of this country. We need a welfare bill
that is tough on work and compassionate toward children - not a
welfare bill that is weak on work and tough on children. I feel
that that should be a bipartisan principle that all of us should
be able to embrace.
Now, the second issue in welfare reform is whether we should
give you a block grant. Instead of having the welfare being an
individual entitlement to every poor person on welfare, should
we just give you whatever money we gave you last year or over
the last three years and let you spend it however you want?
These are two issues here that I ask you to think about, not
only from your perspective, but from the perspective of every
other state.
In Florida, the Republicans in the legislature I spoke with were
not for this. And here's why. The whole purpose of the block
grant is twofold. One is, we give you more flexibility. The
second is, we say in return for more flexibility, you ought to
be able to do the job for less money, so we won't increase the
money you're getting over the next five years, which means we'll
get to save money and lower the deficit. If it works for
everybody concerned it's a good deal.
But what are the stakes - there are two problems with a block
grant in this area, and I want you to help me work through it,
because I am for more flexibility for the states. I would give
every state every waiver that I have given to any state. I want
you to decide what to do with this. I want you to be out there
creating innovative ways to break the cycle of welfare
dependency.
But there are two problems with this. Number one, if you have a
state with a very large number of children eligible for public
assistance and they're growing rapidly, it's very hard to devise
any formula that keeps you from getting hurt in the block grants
over a five-year period. And some states have rapidly growing
populations - Florida, Texas, probably California.

Iowa General Assembly

Index: House Journal (76th General Assembly: Session 1)

© 1995 Cornell College and League of Women Voters of Iowa

Comments? hjourn@legis.iowa.gov.

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URL: /DOCS/GA/76GA/Session.1/HJournal/01800/01891.html
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