Bush Criticizes Senate Welfare Bill

AP via NYTimes.com ^ | 7/29/02

[GeneD]

Filed at 3:03 p.m. ET

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- President Bush insisted Monday that welfare recipients put in a 40-hour work week and said a Senate bill requiring less is riddled with ``so many exceptions, so many loopholes'' that it would reverse six years of welfare progress.

Bush leveled his assault on the Democrat-written legislation while on a $1.2 million fund-raising hop to South Carolina for the state's Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mark Sanford.

He faulted legislation passed last month by Democrats, who control the Senate Finance Committee, because it does not include the stiffer work requirements he seeks, would not produce as much money as he wants for programs promoting marriage, and would increase funds to help working welfare parents pay for child care.

``They're saying we got to spend a bunch more money in order to make us feel better and to make things work better. We don't need that,'' Bush said.

The landmark 1996 welfare overhaul law expires Sept. 30 and the House has already passed a reauthorization in tune with what Bush wants -- most notably by requiring most welfare recipients to work 40 hours per week to continue receiving government checks. The 1996 law requires 30 hours of work each week.

The Senate is looking at a different version, written by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., that toughens the current work requirement but allows more flexibility in counting education and training as work.

``There are so many exceptions, so many loopholes, so many ways out of holding people to high standards that fewer people would actually be moving from welfare to work,'' Bush told an invited audience at Charleston's West Ashley High School.

One proposed ``loophole'' he criticized would let welfare recipients count college classes toward their work requirements.

``Under the way they're kind of writing it right now out of the Senate Finance Committee, some people could spend their entire five years -- there's a five-year work requirement -- on welfare going to college,'' Bush said.

``Now, that's not my view of helping people become independent and it's certainly not my view of understanding the importance of work and helping people achieve the dignity necessary so they can live a free life, free from government control.''

Bush highlighted the success of the 1996 law, which, combined with the booming economy, cut welfare rolls by more than half. He said tougher work requirements would continue that progress.

The Senate bill, he contended, ``is a retreat from the success.''

``I believe that if the bill goes through the way they've written it, we're going to go backward here in America and the bill would hurt the very people we're trying to help,'' the president said.

Michael Siegel, Democratic spokesman for the Senate Finance Committee, countered, saying, ``This is a bipartisan bill that includes a broad range of views supported by Senate members of the president's own party and is one that we feel certainly strikes the right balance.''

Ranit Schmelzer, spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, said the South Dakota Democrat wants to schedule welfare reform for a fall vote by the full Senate but he needs White House help in making sure it will not be bogged down by amendments. Daschle voted against the Baucus bill in committee because he said it did not contain enough child care money.

The measure proposes spending $5.5 billion to help working parents pay for child care, $1.8 billion more than the House version and $1 billion more than the current law.

Bush was on the ground in South Carolina just three hours and his comments on welfare policy allowed the Sanford campaign to pass off to taxpayers part of the tab for the president's travel.

Introducing Bush at the campaign luncheon, Sanford acknowledged there would be no lingering for Bush at his 37th fund raiser for the year.

``The quicker we can get this clapping done, the quicker we can get him back on Air Force One,'' Sanford told the 1,250 people who anted up $1 million for his campaign and $200,000 for the state Republican Party.

The cash will buy Sanford television ads to compete with Democrat incumbent Gov. Jim Hodges, who has more than $4 million to run on, compared with Sanford's $500,000 cash on hand.

[chit*chat]

I think the message here is that out-of-wedlock children are no longer a way to avoid working for a living.

Time for single parents struggling to make ends meet to stop blaming the village and look in the mirror at the person who created the vicious cycle.

[stylin19a]

``They're saying we got to spend a bunch more money in order to make us feel better and to make things work better. We don't need that,'' Bush said.
Could be a Freeper quote of the day/week/month/year

[gcruse]

 riddled with ``so many exceptions, so many loopholes''
that it would reverse six years of welfare progress

That's worth a few hoots and a holler.  Remember
the agriwelfare bill?  It reversed years of phasing
out price supports.  It was passed to buy votes.

For Bush to criticize the Democrats for trying
to reverse years of tightening welfare rules in
order to buy votes just goes to show you that
hypocrisy is to imbedded in these two political
parties that the voter really has no choice at
the polls.  The lesser of the two evils is still
evil, and no lesser.