TRANSFORMING WELFARE: Fact Sheet - 7/31/92 July 31, 1992 PRESIDENT BUSH: TRANSFORMING WELFARE o The President's Goals for Transforming Welfare: Too often, welfare systems create dependency instead of self-reliance. The President believes welfare should be a temporary helping hand, not a way of life. And, once on welfare, recipients have responsibilities to taxpayers -- to find work, to obey the law, to avoid having additional children, and to keep their children off drugs. o Waiving Burdensome Federal Regulations: President Bush has approved waivers of federal regulations for five states, allowing these states' reforms to go into effect. Far-reaching state reforms in California, Wisconsin, and New Jersey will promote the President's goals of keeping families together, and ensuring that welfare recipients behave responsibly. o The President's Welfare Reform Plan: President Bush announced far-reaching legislation to return the values of work and responsibility to anti-poverty programs, and to end the cycle of welfare dependency. Under the President's proposals: -- The President would be able to waive federal regulations that inhibit reforms in Food Stamps and federal housing programs. -- Public housing residents and the homeless would be able to work in housing improvement projects. -- States and communities could undertake broad reforms involving a number of federal programs. -- Other legislation would encourage new types of state reforms, sometimes without having to seek federal waivers. o Clinton on State Welfare Reforms -- I'm for them too, I think? Clinton has had two contradictory opinions about New Jersey's reforms, which deny additional welfare payments to recipients who have more children. First Clinton said he would not have signed the law, but months later said that he would have signed a federal waiver for it. Then, Clinton compared California's welfare plan unfavorably to New Jersey's, and strongly implied that he would not have approved a waiver for California's plan. o Clinton's Arkansas -- still poor and mismanaged after all these years: After Clinton's 12 years in office, Arkansas now suffers from a state welfare bureaucracy whose administrative costs have ballooned by 3,000 percent since 1983. Since Clinton's welfare "reform" program started, Arkansas's total welfare caseload has increased by 12 percent (as of this April). This January Clinton claimed his reforms had been reviewed by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. (MDRC) as "one of the three of four best programs in the United States." In fact, neither the MDRC nor any other independent group has reviewed his program. # # #