The legislation provides us with a great opportunity to make welfare a transitional system, rather than a way of life. We can reward states for their success in moving people from welfare to work, not merely for how well they get the checks out. Many more parents can participate in work opportunities and obtain the safe and healthy child care they need to protect their children while they go to work. We are at the center of a major transformation in the nature of the federal-state partnership. States now assume primary responsibility for ensuring that the welfare system works.
States have the authority and the flexibility to design programs which meet their individual needs.
The legislation gives them much more opportunity to respond creatively and individually to the highly diverse needs of their children and families. In return for this new authority and flexibility, the legislation holds states more accountable for program performance. At the federal level, we will be monitoring state performance and program implementation. Later, as required by the new statute, we will be ranking states according to their performance, identifying and studying the high performers and low performers, providing an overall assessment of the legislation's impact on children and families, and tracking child poverty. We will work to ensure that the new programs help families get quickly through the hard times back into the mainstream of society.