This is a sad time for the children of this nation and for our future. With President Clinton’s signing of the welfare-reform bill, he and Congress have relegated more than a million children to poverty.
There is no question of the need to reform our welfare system. But what is being touted by both the Democrats and Republicans as welfare reform is nothing more than election-year politics. Real welfare reform will help people become self-sufficient. Building that capacity costs money. Real welfare reform will cost but will result in people with the ability not only to sustain themselves but to pass that ethic on to their children.
The training, child care and support systems that it will take to accomplish this appear in this bill, not with more dollars to ensure their success but with fewer dollars for a larger number of people. The bill that will now become the law of the land cuts funds. It will reduce support for food stamps, for child-care subsidies and health-care options. It also discriminates among those who are poor, making some more “worthy” than others. These welfare cuts will affect the majority of those who are presently on welfare and many more who have had no say in this process. It will affect thousands of children. It seems that welfare reform is not really about reform . . . it’s about politics. And now both political parties can claim, in this election year, that they “reformed” our welfare system. And, as we all know, children don’t vote.
For those of us who have long advocated on behalf of children who cannot yet speak out for themselves, we will now turn our attention to the state legislatures, where this newly reformed welfare system will be implemented. We hope that they will keep their focus on what is important. But we are concerned that our state legislatures are also filled with elected politicians who will play politics with the lives of children. And the thousands of poor children in this state are not voting . . . yet.
